Honour and the Sword Read online

  Honour and the Sword

  A. L. BERRIDGE

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published 2010

  Copyright © A. L. Berridge, 2010

  Map artwork by Stuart James

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright

  reserved above, no part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,

  or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior

  written permission of both the copyright owner and

  the above publisher of this book

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-194169-1

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Editor’s Note

  PART I: The Boy

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  PART II: The Soldier

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  PART III: The Chevalier

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Historical Note

  From all that terror teaches,

  From lies of tongue and pen,

  From all the easy speeches

  That comfort cruel men,

  From sale and profanation

  Of honour and the sword,

  From sleep and from damnation,

  Deliver us, good Lord!

  – from ‘A Hymn’ by G. K. Chesterton

  Acknowledgements

  I must apologize to the people of Picardy, not only for dumping my fictional Saillie smack in the middle of the Forest of Lucheux, but also for landing them with so tempestuous a son as André de Roland. I have tried to find names authentic to both place and period for my fictional characters, but if any of these appear to reflect badly on a genuine family of the time, then I apologize unreservedly to their descendants for a similarity which is both unintentional and coincidental. The real personages, however, are written as history shows them to have been, and require no apology from me.

  Many of those I should thank most are long dead, for the best sources on seventeenth-century France remain the vast number of contemporary memoirs. I would still have been lost in this wealth of material without the guidance of many members of the Society for French Historical Studies, and in particular Robin Briggs (author of Early Modern France 1560–1715) and Dr David Parrott (author of Richelieu’s Army), whose generous personal help and encouragement I can only acknowledge with astonished gratitude. I am also much indebted to Ken Mondschein for advice on historical fencing, and to David Reid of the St Albans Fencing Club for guidance on practical aspects of the art. Thanks are due also to the many friends who helped with the different languages, and in particular Clare Cox, who polished the lyrics of ‘Le Petit Oiseau’. Anything impressive in this book is down to these experts; the mistakes are entirely my own.

  I am also very grateful to those who gave invaluable feedback and advice in the actual writing, especially Julie Howley, Janet Berkeley, Michelle Lovric and Harry Bingham of The Writers’ Workshop, my agent Victoria Hobbs, and my editor Alex Clarke. Thanks also to Mervyn Ramsey and Laura Rawling for their inspiration and encouragement, and finally to my husband Paul Crichton, without whose faith and support Honour and the Sword would never have been written at all.

  Editor’s Note

  Even the dead can speak.

  It is not from me the reader will learn the story of André de Roland, but from the recorded voices of those who actually knew him: a handful of letters, the memoirs of a parish priest, the journal of an adolescent girl, and the transcripts of interviews with a soldier, a merchant, a blacksmith, a tanner, and a stable boy. These interviews are the first in a series conducted by the young Abbé Fleuriot, and appear to be surprisingly frank. The reader should remember, however, that while it is possible for a speaker to reveal more than he knows, it is not only the living who can lie.

  In order to render the oral material accessible to a modern reader, I have adopted an informal approach to the translation, and substituted modern English idioms for those of seventeenth-century Picardy. The content, however, is bound to remain alien. André de Roland was anachronistic even in his own times, genuinely believing ‘honour’ to be something which ought to affect his behaviour and play an integral part in his daily life. The reader will not need me to point out the danger of this, nor is that my responsibility. The dead may speak; it is the job of the historian only to see that they are heard.

  Edward Morton, MA, LittD, Cambridge,

  April 2010

  PART I

  The Boy

  One

  Jacques Gilbert

  From his interviews with the Abbé Fleuriot, 1669

  You can trust me.

  No one knew him like I did. Not that bastard Stefan for a start, you don’t want to believe a word he says. You don’t need him, you don’t need any of them, except maybe Anne later on. I’m the only one who really knows.

  I knew him from when he was tiny. My Mother was his nurse up at the Manor, and sometimes she’d take me with her so I saw a lot of him even then. They had all kinds of interesting stuff there, like a real clock in the hall and a tapestry with all pictures of stags on it, and a great big gong on the landing. Sometimes we’d see the Seigneur himself, and he was always kind, he used to give me sugared nuts which he carried round in a little silver box, and sometimes he’d ruffle my hair and call me a fine boy. More often it was just me and Mother in the boy’s room, and sometimes she’d sing to us, which was nice, and sometimes she’d make me play with him, which wasn’t. He wasn’t really André back then, he was just a baby that cried a lot, because I was jealous of him for taking my mother away and sometimes used to pinch him when she wasn’t looking.

  I saw more of him when he was older, because he was the Seigneur’s son and I had to be nice t
o him and trot him around the paddock and answer all his stupid questions beginning ‘Jacques, why …?’ It was always ‘why’ in those days. It was only much later he started asking the really hard questions, the ones that begin with ‘if’.

  But it wasn’t a proper kind of knowing in those days, just sort of knowing the shape of him and the things he did and said. I was only the stable-master’s son and he was André de Roland, he’d be Comte de Vallon when his uncle finally got on and died. But I did use to watch him, because if your own life’s a bit crap you can get a lot of entertainment out of watching people with better ones, and anyway I thought he was funny. He had this awful temper back then, he’d shout and wave his arms about, and sometimes even stamp. He never did it with me, of course, he was always polite with servants, it was only being ordered about he couldn’t stand, or people telling him things he couldn’t do.

  What I liked best was watching him fence. I know peasants don’t have anything to do with swords, but there was no harm in looking, it’s like there was a bit of glass between him and me like a window and I was always safely on the other side. I think he knew I watched him, but I don’t believe he minded. He hadn’t anyone of his own kind to play with, his mother just used to drift round looking beautiful and never having any more children, and Colin’s dad said it was a black disgrace, they ought to have a spare in case anything happened. He didn’t say what ‘anything’ meant, but I knew, my own little sister Clare had died that year.

  It was a pity for the boy, though, and I think it made him lonely. That makes me feel bad now, him being lonely and me just watching him being it, but that’s as much as I wanted in those days. I remember one time when he sort of reached out and smashed the window between us, and it got me one of the worst beatings I ever had.

  It was one afternoon when they were looking for him all over the estate. That happened a lot actually, most days you’d hear someone yelling ‘André!’ round the place, he was never where he was meant to be, that boy, just never. But this time it was important because the new Baron de Verdâme had brought his children to meet the Rolands, and there wasn’t a sign of André anywhere. I just went on mucking out the stables, then I dug the fork back in the straw and there he was, curled up at the bottom trying to hide. I gaped at him, but he got his finger up to his lips, and I heard César, the Second Coachman, go by calling him, and I didn’t say a word.

  It’s natural, isn’t it, it’s instinct. You stick together against the adults, though I’d have been fourteen then and him only eleven. So I never said a thing, I just went on working round him, but he wouldn’t keep quiet, he started up gabbing, then someone was coming and he was trying to burrow back under the straw, but it was the Seigneur himself at the door and we were caught.

  It was terrible. The Seigneur kind of lifted him up, got him out of the stables and standing on the cobbles in front of him, all with just a look. It was a belting look, that one, very powerful. The boy inherited it, so I should know.

  Then he really laid into him. Not the way my Father would have done, it was all just what he was saying, how the boy had let him down, let his whole family down, embarrassed his mother, failed as a gentleman, and shamed them all in front of their new neighbours. I could see the boy getting white in the face and his lip starting to tremble, then his father got even angrier and said in this terrible voice ‘You will not cry, André,’ and the boy swallowed it back and stuck his chin out and said ‘Yes, Sieur.’ There were times I wondered if my own Father really loved me because he beat me so much, but I remember thinking in a way what the Seigneur was doing was worse.

  Then he turned to me and said ‘As for you, young Jacques …’ and my heart jumped I was so frightened, but the boy leapt in at once and said it wasn’t my fault because he’d ordered me. The Seigneur looked at him then, and I saw he really did love him after all, but that didn’t stop him giving him another bollocking for putting me in an impossible situation, which was apparently even worse than being rude to the Baron. Then he packed the boy off to apologize, but I saw Father watching on the other side of the track, then I knew I was really in trouble and felt sick.

  But the Seigneur was nearer. I was standing in the doorway clutching my hat and rubbing and pulling at it, and my hands were all sweaty and I wished I was dead, but he just leant forward and said ‘You did quite right, Jacques. A gentleman never tells.’ That was an odd thing to say, but I knew he meant it kindly, so I tried to smile and say ‘Yes, Sieur,’ like the boy did, and he reached out and tousled my hair. Then Father was suddenly there next to me, apologizing for what I’d done and saying he’d deal with it now, and the way he was saying it was like telling the Seigneur to piss off.

  The Seigneur said not to worry, it was his own boy caused the trouble and he hoped my Father wouldn’t be hard on me for it, but Father just bowed and looked him right in the eye, which you’re not supposed to do with nobility, you’re meant to look at the ground or your boots or something, then he stuck his hand on my shoulder and said ‘He’s my lad, Sieur.’

  I could never understand how Father didn’t get sacked or flogged, because quite apart from the drinking he could be really rude sometimes, but instead of ordering him hauled off to have something horrible done to him, the Seigneur just looked at him a minute then turned away. I watched his boots walking out of sight, then Father took me into the stable and beat the shit out of me.

  Nobody beat André, of course, that window was round him all the time like a bubble nothing could get through. I remember crawling home that afternoon, bruised and aching all over, and seeing him sitting by the sunken garden with a girl, deep in conversation like there was no such thing as a stable boy trudging past with a black eye and ribs that were purple for a month. That would have been Anne, I suppose, it was the first time they met, but I wasn’t thinking about that at the time, I just wanted to get home to Mother and tell her it wasn’t my fault.

  I avoided him after that. He caught me at the stables next day to say sorry, and I just mumbled it didn’t matter and wouldn’t look at him, and after a while he went away. He still came hanging round asking questions sometimes, but now I just said ‘yes’ and ‘no’ till he left me alone. It was better that way.

  Until the night the Spaniards came, and everything changed.

  This is when it really began, the summer of 1636. This is when it gets really hard, what you’re asking me to do. I can remember all right, I remember all of it, but I understand what was going on in a way I never did at the time, so I’m sort of seeing things wrong and not what they were really like at all.

  If you want the truth as it really was, then don’t ask me to remember. What I’ve got to do is forget. I’ve got to forget everything I know now and feel now, and everything about what happened later. I’ve got to go back to being what I was then, that hot night in July when the Spaniards came.

  Père Gérard Benoît

  From his André de Roland, A Personal Memoir, privately printed in 1662

  It was yet within the octave of Peter and Paul in the year of Our Lord 1636 that the Spaniards came to our village.

  The seigneuries of Dax and Verdâme, or the ‘Dax-Verdâme Saillie’, as they are collectively known, lie to the north of Lucheux, and thrust as a finger into the territory of Artois, at that time in the hands of the Spanish Netherlands. The villages had long been part of Artois themselves, and indeed are still bulwarked on three sides by the now famous Dax-Verdâme Wall, constructed at the time of the uprising in Flanders against Philippe le Bel. This hastily assembled fortification is unusual in its extent, encompassing even a portion of the major farms within its perimeter, but boasts neither flanks nor bastions, nor is even of considerable height, standing in places no more than six or seven foot above the moat. Yet frail a defence as it seems, this Wall had still a significant part to play in our history, as my readers shall learn.

  By the time of which I write, however, the Saillie had long been absorbed by conquest into Picardie, and although the Wall
remained, its Gates were ever open and its people enjoyed the freedom of the realm of France. So the villages prospered, especially that of Dax-en-roi, where I have the honour to serve as parish priest. It may seem a false modesty to ascribe the name of ‘villages’ to so large an area, but the northern part is entirely given over to a thick forest which extends well over the border with Artois, its steeply rising slopes and great east gorge rendering the land impractical for building.

  The Dax of 1636 was a contented community. The Chevalier de Roland kept his own Household Guard, so we had only a small militia to feed and billet, and while the gabelle or salt tax imposed a grievous burden, our crops made us largely self-sufficient, and the visitor could find here no trace of the poverty to be seen in so many villages of our kind. Verdâme was in other case, its Seigneur having died without issue and its new Baron being unacquainted with the needs of a rural population, but its little businesses still thrived, and starvation had yet to come there.