Honour and the Sword Page 13

  I am still sorry for Don Miguel, who truly does seem a kind man. He visited today to enquire after our well-being, and I would have liked to tell him about the food, but Colette says we are at the mercy of the men here and must not risk upsetting them. She may be right. This morning the Slug came on duty still in his outdoor clothes, and he was wearing that beautiful pleated brown coat Josef was so proud of. Florian says it proves nothing, Josef perhaps ran in only his nightshirt, but I cannot believe he would have left that coat behind. There is also a tear in the back, I saw the line of lumped stitching where a hole must have been, and Josef would never have been so careless. Dear Josef, who would not so much as kill a mouse in the kitchen that day, and told Françoise only to let him know when it was gone. I think Colette is right and these men are capable of anything.

  However, Don Miguel was as kind as ever, and even brought with him a chess set so that he and Florian might play. It is so good of him to do that. My poor brother, I sometimes worry about the way his mind is wandering, but he can still be sharp at chess, his face takes on quite the old look and for an hour or so he is Florian again. Don Miguel seemed quite puzzled how to beat him when that servant of his arrived with the news.

  He is very jolly and friendly, the servant called Carlos, but he was not in the best of moods tonight. He spoke in Spanish, of course, with no idea that I understood him, but he said there had been eight of their men killed and the ninth likely to die from wounds within the night. He said the man claimed his assailant had been a very young man with long black hair who was exceptionally skilful with a sword, and Don Miguel sat up so abruptly he almost upset the chess board. He said ‘André de Roland, Carlos, what did I tell you?’

  They said no more in front of us, Don Miguel conceded the game and left, but it was enough for me, it is still enough now. All this time Colette has said André must have escaped to Paris and cares nothing for us, but I now know for certain that is not true. He is out there. Somewhere outside my window he is out there and fighting back.

  Carlos Corvacho

  From his interviews with the Abbé Fleuriot, 1669

  Oh no, Señor, call me Carlos, I’m more than happy with that. My Capitán used to call me Carlos. That’s the Don Miguel d’Estrada as was, Señor, a most amiable gentleman. I’d only been an ordinary corselete in his company, but he took to me from the first, and when his personal servant died at the Dax barricades I was the natural choice to take his place.

  Oh bless you, no, I’m quite comfortable in French. Most men in the Army of Flanders pick up a little, but it was that much easier for me, you understand, my poor mother being half French herself. Tragic it seemed to me, two Catholic countries fighting each other instead of standing together against the heretics. Tragic.

  Still, it’s all behind us now, isn’t it, Señor, and very nice to be back at Ancre. Got it all back looking beautiful, haven’t they? Just the way it was. Not that I saw much of it myself, you understand, I was mainly outside the Manor that night, hardly went in at all, but the men that did – well, they talked, Señor, it’s only natural.

  But it’s not old Carlos you want to know about, now is it, Señor? My gentleman now, oh he was a one, people stepped out of his way on the streets of Madrid. The ‘Lacemaker’ they used to call him, did you know? He’d have been sixteen then, still only a young abanderado in our company, which is what I think you call an ‘enseigne’, is that right, Señor? It was only his second duel, but his opponent was afraid of his reputation, and turned up in the biggest shirt you ever saw, sleeves like young sails, or so they say, hoping my gentleman would be deceived into missing his body altogether. He wasn’t fooled, Señor, not our Don Miguel, but attacked the shirt as if he were, reducing it to ribbons till it resembled nothing so much as fine Venetian lace. ‘Ah!’ says my gentleman. ‘So there is a body under all this finery. Let us see if there’s a heart as well.’ He then proved there was by stabbing the silly fellow right through it. Oh, he’d wonderful wit, my Capitán.

  But he was a kind man underneath. There were men in our company complained he wasn’t hard enough, there ought to be more reprisals, but that wasn’t my Capitán’s way, he used to say it was a poor lord who murdered his own servants. You need to understand, Señor, this occupation business didn’t come natural to him. He was a soldier, the very best, he ought to have been back campaigning, not stuck in this dunghill with a pack of rebellious peasants. But that’s the way it goes with politics, isn’t it, Señor? There’d been a little trouble over his killing a friend of the Conde-Duque’s in a duel, so here we were stuck, and nothing to be done but make the best of it until a proper governor could be found to take over.

  But we had to tame the natives first, and that didn’t look like happening just yet that winter. We’d lost a few men before, nothing too serious, but then nine men down in this single day and things started to look different. There was this one fellow managed to speak to the surgeon before he died, and we didn’t like what he said at all. Oh, you know about that, Señor? Now, you’ll forgive my asking how?

  No, no, not in the least, I’m very happy for the Señor to keep his secrets, I’ve nothing to hide. Yes, it’s true, my Capitán thought one of the attackers might be de Roland. Oh, we knew about him, the padre told us he existed, the hostages gave us his description, we knew he was about somewhere. He wasn’t in Dax, any nobleman would have stood out like a blister in a place this primitive, but he might be hiding in the woods, seeing as they stretched for miles and no hope of searching them without a full tercio with nothing else to do for months. We weren’t that bothered at first, he was only a lad and not much harm in that, but now we started to wonder if letting him escape wasn’t the worst mistake we’d made yet. As my Capitán said, occupied villages generally come to heel fast enough, but if there’s a leader left over from the old regime, who knows what kind of resistance they might stir up?

  Poor de Castilla was in real trouble now. Oh, I’m sorry, Señor, I’m forgetting you don’t know about him. Not that he was important, not in the least, he was only the abanderado in the raid on the Manor. My Capitán had given orders most particular the family wasn’t to be harmed in any way, seeing they’re of real value as hostages, and first de Castilla lets the lady escape by suiciding herself, and next we find out about this child he swears blind he’s never seen at all. My Capitán was a little suspicious of his story, felt something about it didn’t seem right, but it was no more than truth, Señor, I can testify to that myself. None of our men so much as broke into their apartments, and as for the child, there wasn’t one of us saw him, not one. Why do you look at me like that, Señor? We were never in those rooms at all, not until it was over. There’s no one alive says different, is there?

  No, my Capitán had no reason to doubt it, only that he never much cared for de Castilla. Very old family there, father at Breda, but poor as peasants and he’d a very unfortunate manner. He liked to swagger round the place, bully the men to show what a fine dog he was, you know the type I mean. He was forever picking on the nuevo rico, I don’t know your word for it, Señor, the rich officers with no breeding. My gentleman was already looking for an excuse to transfer him to Verdâme.

  Not that it mattered now, Señor, bless me, we don’t want to waste your time on him. What mattered was young de Roland was loose in the Saillie, and from the look of it going to turn out more trouble than we’d ever dreamed. My Capitán sent his description round again, but more than that we couldn’t do.

  ‘For the moment,’ said my Capitán, and to my surprise I saw he was smiling. ‘You’ve never fenced, have you, Carlos? Let them think we know nothing. Let them get confident. Sooner or later they’ll give us the opening we need.’

  Jacques Gilbert

  I got pissed that night.

  I didn’t mean to, I only went into Dax to check Colin and Robert got home all right, but they were both celebrating in the Corbeaux and of course I had to join them. Everyone there guessed I was involved because they all knew And
ré had to be, so people kept buying me cider and treating me like some kind of hero.

  After a while I began to feel like one. When it got late I went across to see Simone, and when I left I felt better than a hero, because now I was a man, I was really a man at last. The sky felt huge, but so did I, I felt like I was part of everything, instead of just an ant crawling over the surface.

  Of course I was just drunk, I know that now. I remember finding myself sitting by the side of the road giggling at nothing, and knew I must have fallen over. I was still staggering when I finally reached the cobbles in front of my cottage, shoved the door open and stepped inside.

  I hadn’t realized how late it was. The candles were on their last inch, the fire was low, and there wasn’t any steam coming out of the pot. My parents were still at the table with Little Pierre, but Mother looked weary and slumped, and when she turned her face towards the door it felt like it cost her a lot of effort. Then she smiled and said ‘Hello, my darling.’

  Father grinned at me, his face glistening in the firelight. ‘Sweet Jesus in Heaven, look at the state of it.’

  I moved carefully to a chair, while Mother got me some soup. I said ‘Has André had his?’

  Father’s face clouded. His eyes went like stones when you take them out of the stream and they stop being pretty, they just go on being stones. ‘Been and gone.’

  ‘Was he worried about me?’

  Father gave an odd little grunt. ‘Not him. Your Mother’s been worried sick, but I don’t suppose that bothers you, does it, boy?’

  Mother said ‘It’s all right, darling, André said you’d had a hard day, he quite understood.’ She put a bowl of tepid soup in front of me, but there was hare in it and the fatty smell made me feel sick. I reached for the wine instead.

  ‘What kind of hard day would that be exactly?’ asked Father, watching me pour.

  I said ‘Hard,’ and drank the wine.

  Little Pierre laughed. ‘Playing with your swords again? I’ve seen you in the back meadow, it’s just games.’

  I thought of the games we’d played this afternoon. I said ‘You don’t know anything, just shut up, you don’t know.’

  ‘I do,’ said Little Pierre. ‘I know real men went out today to fight for Dax. While you were playing at soldiers, they went and killed a dozen Spaniards stone dead.’

  The room seemed to be going further away. There was just this bowl of soup in front of me making me want to throw up. I heard my own voice saying ‘It wasn’t a dozen, it was nine. And we didn’t mean it like that, it just happened.’

  Everything went very quiet. I wondered if I’d actually spoken or if it was just in my head, but when I looked up they were all staring at me and I knew I had.

  ‘You’re lying,’ said Little Pierre, but he didn’t really think so, his eyes were wide.

  ‘I’m not.’ I dug out my handkerchief and slammed it on the table. The blood was dry now, but it was still thick and sticky where I’d wiped my hands. ‘Me and André fought today, we fought with our swords side by side.’

  Mother whispered ‘Jacques …’ but couldn’t get any further.

  Father threw back his head and gave this great, loud laugh that hurt my head. ‘You and André? I might have known.’

  ‘We’re soldiers,’ I said stupidly. ‘I can use a sword and everything.’

  ‘And what does a stable boy like you want with a sword?’

  ‘I’m not a stable boy, I’m a soldier. I’d have been going in the army this year anyway. This is like training for that. André and me, we’ll be going in together.’

  ‘You won’t need a sword then, boy,’ said Father. ‘A pike or musket will be good enough for you.’

  ‘It won’t, I’ll be in the cavalry with André. I’m his aide, aren’t I?’

  ‘When the Occupation’s over?’ His voice was almost kind. ‘When he’s back living in the Manor or staying with the Comtesse in Paris? Still be his aide then, will you?’

  The room felt too hot suddenly, it was starting to move round and round, I put my head down in my lap. Mother sat beside me, stroking my hand and making anxious murmuring noises.

  ‘Don’t fuss, Nell,’ said Father’s voice. ‘He’s pissed, that’s all.’

  ‘He’s upset,’ said Mother.

  ‘He’s pissed.’ I heard the scrape of his chair as he stood. ‘Aide to the Chevalier de Roland, drunk as a stablehand.’

  Little Pierre laughed.

  I saw Mother’s hand take my cup and pour the wine back in the jug. The material of her dress looked smooth and clean, I thought it would be nice and cool to lay my head against, and behind it was my Mother’s softness and comfort and that smell that was like roses. I reached for her, and she leant forward to stroke my hair.

  ‘And why not, Pierre?’ she said. Her voice sounded louder, maybe because I was hearing it through her chest. ‘Who says my son can’t be a gentleman?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be a fool.’ Father’s voice was sort of amused, but there was something hard in it I didn’t like at all. I dragged my head away from Mother and tried to look at him, but he was only pouring more wine.

  ‘It’s not foolish,’ said Mother. ‘André’s taken such a fancy to him, you know he has. He might have him educated. With a little help, why couldn’t Jacques …?’ Her voice was trailing away even as she said it.

  Father gave a soft little laugh. ‘Not kind, Hélène. Not kind to get his hopes up. The poor lad’s beginning to forget who he is.’ He picked up the cup and brought it over to me. ‘Here you go, boy. A little more of this, and you’ll start to remember.’

  Mother made an infuriated noise and smacked the cup out of his hand. The pewter crashed and rolled noisily on the stone, and the wine slooshed out in a great red puddle on the floor. Father looked expressionlessly at it, then cracked Mother hard against the face, making her stumble backwards against my chair. I closed my eyes.

  ‘Clean it up,’ said Father. ‘It’ll stain.’

  I’d got to get out. I pressed my hands on the table and managed to clamber to my feet. Father was telling Little Pierre to go to bed, and I knew it was only just starting.

  ‘Don’t forget your trophy,’ said Father.

  He nodded towards the handkerchief. It looked disgusting and horrible, I picked it up and threw it on the fire. The smell as it burnt was filthy, and I only just made it out the door before I was sick.

  I crouched on the cobbles, sucking in deep breaths of night air. I’d walked over this yard feeling happy and excited, a man and a hero, and now I was nothing. I’d sicked up what felt like my whole guts, but there was still this cold weight somewhere like undigested porridge, something sad and aching inside my chest. I forced myself up and staggered back to the barn.

  The boy was already asleep. One hand was sticking out of the blanket, and I saw how brown and rough it was now, the nails nearly as scuffed and broken as mine. But I knew it didn’t mean anything, it was only on the surface. The ache inside me grew heavier as I started to understand just how very stupid I’d been.

  It was still there in the morning, along with the most appalling headache. I rolled myself up in my blanket and didn’t even put my head out when André got up for his fencing exercises. I just wanted to be dead.

  When I woke again he was back. He was pacing up and down making the boards creak, and as soon as he saw me moving he was right there.

  ‘Are you ready for breakfast?’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Neither am I.’

  I peeled my eyelids open to look at him. He was wearing his sword, and that puzzled me. He’d never done that in daylight, it was too risky. I wondered what had changed.

  He said ‘The fire wasn’t lit when I went out. I want to make sure everything’s all right.’

  I got myself up fast. I knew exactly what would have happened, and didn’t want him charging in and making it worse. Father had been very careful about that kind of thing since André came, so I hoped he had this time too.r />
  But he hadn’t. Mother was nowhere to be seen, it was Father salvaging the fire, and only Little Pierre at the table, eating his bread in silence. Father looked up and gave a little grin when he saw how ill I was, but he winced when I shut the door so I knew he wasn’t much better himself.

  The boy didn’t seem to notice, he only wanted to know about Mother. I kept my head down while Father said she was just tired and wanted to be left alone, but when we heard a noise from the back yard André was out and gone before I could stop him.

  I went straight after him but of course I was too late. He’d found Mother at the well, he’d seen the black eye and bruises and was already asking what happened, who did it? I could see he was furious, his face was white with it.

  Then Father was standing in the doorway looking at us, and we all went quiet. André faced him with his chin up and I knew he knew.

  ‘Who did this?’

  ‘It was an accident,’ pleaded Mother.

  ‘Who did this?’ the boy asked Father, and his hands were bunching into fists, though he must have known my Father could break him in two. ‘What kind of coward would do a thing like this?’

  Father’s face twisted and he made a sudden move forward. Mother cried out, but André just took one step back on his left foot and drew his sword.

  Father stopped. The sword wasn’t pointed at him, it was just there, but the boy’s hand kept it totally steady. Then slowly Father smiled. He leant against the doorway, and took a bite out of the hunk of bread in his hand.

  ‘Sieur,’ he said, and at the sound of his tone the boy brought the sword up into the en garde. ‘This is your house and your property, I and my family owe you our duty. But there is one thing you cannot do, and that is to interfere between husband and wife. That, Sieur, is only for the good God.’

  He chewed his bread slowly, watching André with bright, malicious eyes. He was like a bull in his own territory, and the boy had blundered into the wrong field.