Hawkwood had dragged the name out of the air and awarded himself the promotion to circumvent the man on the horse from pulling rank. The ploy worked. Taken aback and not sure whether he should offer salutations to a senior officer whose dishevelled appearance was, to say the least, questionable, the lieutenant’s eyes moved back to the still wincing Stuart.

“I am Lieutenant Gaston Malbreau of the Mahon garrison. Where are you billeted, Captain? I wasn’t aware the 93rd was deployed in this district.” The lieutenant’s gaze lifted.

“It isn’t,” Hawkwood said, deflecting the question and uttering a silent prayer as he did so. Another snippet of information to be stored away.

The lieutenant frowned. “Then where have you come from?”

Hawkwood jerked his thumb seawards. “There.”

The lieutenant followed Hawkwood’s gesture and stared out towards the Channel’s murky horizon. His features twisted in puzzlement. He turned back. “I’m not with you, Captain. What are you telling me?”

“That I’m here by the grace of God and the efforts of this brave fellow,” Hawkwood said, indicating Stuart. “And I’d appreciate a couple of blankets and a canteen, Corporal. Sharpish, if you please. We’re thirsty and we’re bloody freezing.” Hawkwood held out his hand impatiently, indicating that the corporal didn’t have a choice in the matter.

The corporal blinked and looked to his lieutenant for authorization.

The lieutenant hesitated and then nodded curtly as if annoyed at having his chain of command usurped. As the corporal directed two of his men to hand over their bedrolls and a canteen, he addressed Hawkwood once again. “I’m still not following you, Captain. Are you telling me you’ve just come ashore?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

Hawkwood’s enigmatic response drew an immediate frown. “I see no signs of a vessel.”

“No,” Hawkwood said drily. “You wouldn’t. She was lost in last night’s storm. We’re the only ones who made it. The rest of the crew went down with her. Between you and me, Lieutenant, I wasn’t so foolish as to expect a garland of flowers and a kiss on the cheek from the Emperor, but this wasn’t the way I wanted to return to the motherland, not after two years in a God-damned British prison ship.”

The lieutenant’s chin came up sharply. “Prison ship?”

A murmur ran through the rest of the patrol. Hawkwood draped one of the blankets around Stuart’s shoulders and held the canteen to the lieutenant’s lips. Stuart took the canteen with his good hand and gulped greedily. This time there was no fakery in his actions.

Hawkwood took back the canteen and raised it to his own mouth. The water was warm and brackish but it tasted like nectar after the amount of salt water he’d ingested. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Eight hundred of us; kept like animals and fed on swill you wouldn’t feed to a goat. You ever tasted salted herring and turnips, Lieutenant? You wouldn’t like it, trust me. Two years was more than enough.”

“You escaped?”

Hawkwood nodded wearily. He handed the canteen back to the corporal and made a play of wrapping the remaining blanket around himself. The material was threadbare and in keeping with the rough state of the patrol’s uniforms. As a result there wasn’t a great deal of comfort or warmth in it, but beggars, Hawkwood reflected, couldn’t be choosers. “Damned right, I did.”

The patrol’s musket barrels, he saw, were beginning to droop.

Malbreau nodded towards Stuart, his face set. “And this man? He was also a prisoner?”

Hawkwood shook his head and placed his hand on Stuart’s shoulder. “No, he’s a British sea captain and if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t be talking with you now.”

The members of the patrol exchanged startled glances. The lieutenant stiffened. His eyes narrowed. “How so?”

“He’s a smuggler; what the English call a free trader. It was Captain Stuart’s ship that I took passage on. Cost me a fortune; four thousand francs, if you can believe it. Not what I’d call free trade. Not by a long shot! But I’ll say this for them: they’re damned well organized. Arranged my escape from the hulk, accommodation and all my transportation.”

Hawkwood gave Stuart a reassuring pat on the shoulder and wondered how much of the conversation Griffin’s commander had managed to follow. “So I want him taken care of until we can arrange his return home. His arm needs looking at. You’ve a medical officer back at the garrison, I take it?”

“Surgeon Manseraux.” It was the corporal who replied, to a tart look from the lieutenant, Hawkwood noted.

“Competent?” Hawkwood asked.

“He’s a bloody butcher.” The soldier grinned, showing teeth as yellow as parchment.

Hawkwood returned the grin. “Excellent. What’s your name, Corporal?”

Hawkwood had no interest whatsoever in the corporal’s name but he was following one of the first principles of military prudence: cultivate the non-commissioned men. Get them on your side and you could win wars.

The corporal straightened. “Despard, sir.”

“Then I thank you for your advice, Corporal Despard.” He turned to the man on the horse. “I regret I’m not too familiar with this part of the country, Lieutenant. How far are we from this garrison of yours? Mahon, did you say?” Hawkwood forged an expression that suggested he was trying to search his memory. “Wait, that would be . . . Ambleteuse, am I right?”

The lieutenant twisted in his saddle and jerked his chin towards a point over his shoulder. “Two miles up the coast beyond the dunes.”

Still very formal, though, Hawkwood noted. A warning bell began to tinkle.

“Good. Then we should proceed there without delay. The sooner I’m reunited with my regiment the better. Now that I’m home, I’m anxious to get back to the fight. But then, who wouldn’t be, eh?”

The lieutenant turned and drew himself up. “Quite so, Captain. Permit me to congratulate you on your safe return.” The lieutenant paused and his face took on a new severity. “My men and I will of course accompany you to the fort, though I regret we are required to escort you under arms.”

Malbreau flicked his hand at the corporal and his men, who responded with a look of surprise before taking a renewed grip on their muskets. “As you’ve been away for some time, you may not be aware that the Empire is still under considerable threat from Bourbon sympathizers. There have been a growing number of incursions by royalist agents disembarking from British vessels along our northern coasts and we’ve been warned to remain vigilant, so you’ll forgive me for taking precautions.”

In that one moment, the expression on Malbreau’s face told Hawkwood all he needed to know. He’d sensed his comment about wanting to return to the fight had hit a raw nerve. The lieutenant’s response confirmed it. At some time in his past, Malbreau’s army career had obviously been blighted, probably due to an indiscretion or a poorly judged command. As a result, despite the Emperor’s dire need for able troops to reinforce his eastern divisions, the lieutenant had been consigned to the doldrums: a small, once significant but now poorly manned coastal garrison miles from anywhere. Mahon was going to be the pinnacle of Malbreau’s army career, and he knew it and the inevitability of it consumed him.

And as with all such men, the lieutenant clearly placed the blame for his misfortune squarely on everybody’s shoulders but his own. The bitterness was engrained in every frown, shrug and thrust of his jawline. It oozed from his pores like sweat on a toad. As far as Lieutenant Malbreau was concerned, he was still a cut above everyone else, be they a general, a corporal or, more specifically, anyone holding the rank immediately above him, which on this occasion, turned out to be one Captain Vallon of the 93rd Regiment of Infantry: frontline officer, escaped prisoner of war and, therefore, in the hearts and minds of the Republic, a returning hero. In Malbreau’s eyes, targets of resentment probably didn’t come any bigger.

Hawkwood forced himself to nod in acquiescence and keep his voice calm. “Absolutely, Lieutenant. Quite right, too. For all you and your men know, we could well be subversives, come ashore to wreak havoc about the Empire. It wouldn’t do a lot for your career if you let someone like that slip through your hands without adequate investigation, now, would it?” Hawkwood added blithely.

A nerve moved along the lieutenant’s pale cheek. Hawkwood looked sideways and caught the corporal regarding him with what appeared to be a degree of embarrassment. In response, Hawkwood offered Despard what he hoped was a wry shrug. A corner of the corporal’s mouth lifted; silent affirmation that Lieutenant Gaston Malbreau wasn’t much liked by his own men either and that it was a friction that appeared to transcend the boundaries of rank. Possibly something worth exploiting, Hawkwood mused, should the need arise. He stored that thought away.

His authority sealed, at least in his own mind, Malbreau gripped the reins of his horse. “When we reach Mahon I’ve no doubt the garrison commander will be able to verify your particulars and arrange for your onward journey. Though it may take a while. The same goes for your . . . companion. Does he speak French, by the way?”

Hawkwood shook his head “A few words only and I’m no linguist, alas, so I can’t tell you much about him, other than his name. We were introduced at the beginning of our voyage. Since then, I’m afraid our exchanges have consisted mostly of pointing and waving our arms about. You know how it is.”

“I see.” Malbreau nodded. There was no warmth in his voice. He stared hard at Griffin’s commander and, in passable though heavily accented English, said. “You are Captain . . . Stuart? Is that correct?”

Christ! Hawkwood thought. If Stuart contradicts the story we’re dead men. He held his breath.

Stuart lifted his head. Slowly he got to his feet. Cradling his injured arm, he nodded. “Captain Jonathan Stuart at your service, Lieutenant.”

“What is the name of your ship?”

For a tiny second, Stuart hesitated. Then he frowned, as if deciphering the lieutenant’s pronunciation, and said, “The lugger Pandora, out of Rye. Or at least she was until the storm ripped her to pieces. I’d like to know who’s going to bloody pay for her.”

The lieutenant’s brow creased. “What do you mean?”

“What the hell do you think I mean?” Stuart replied hotly. “You think I was on my own time? I was working for you lot when she went down. Delivering the captain here to the bosom of his family. It wasn’t only my ship. I lost my living and my crewmates in that bloody storm. Like brothers to me, they were; with wives and children. They’re going to need recompense for a start. You going to arrange for me to speak to somebody about that?” Stuart glared hard at the lieutenant before throwing Hawkwood an equally accusatory look.

Hawkwood was struck by the emotion in the English captain’s voice. Stuart’s outburst had not been a piece of theatre; it had been genuine. Angry and distraught at the loss of the crewmen from the Griffin, he was letting anyone within earshot know it, Hawkwood included. Stuart was also, Hawkwood knew, sending him another message: that he’d understood the gist of his exchange with Malbreau.

Feigning incomprehension and bemusement at Stuart’s tirade, Hawkwood turned to the French officer. “What did he say?”

Malbreau gave a derisive snort. “The scoundrel’s only demanding compensation for the loss of his boat.”

“Is he indeed?” Hawkwood appeared to give the matter some thought. “Well, you can’t deny the fellow has a point. Seems only fair after the risks he’s taken. I’ve no doubt something can be arranged. Tell him, I’ll do my best to see he’s suitably reimbursed.”

Malbreau stared at Hawkwood askance.

Hawkwood raised an eyebrow. “What? You doubt the fellow’s claim? You do realize that without friends like the captain here, a lot of good Frenchmen are likely to be spending the rest of the war and possibly the rest of their days in British prisons. What do you think’ll happen if Captain Stuart returns home to tell the rest of his smuggling brethren that we didn’t see right by him? I’ll tell you, Lieutenant: there’ll be no one to give aid to our brave comrades; no one to provide them with shelter or arrange their safe passage across the Sleeve. From what I’ve heard, the war hasn’t been going at all well. France needs every able body. You wouldn’t want to deny experienced men the chance of returning home and answering the Emperor’s call, would you?”

Malbreau flushed. “No, of course not.”

“Damned glad to hear it,” Hawkwood said, turning the screw. “Then tell him what I said.”

Malbreau, after hesitating with his teeth clenched, did as Hawkwood instructed. Stuart listened to the grudging translation then turned to Hawkwood and, after fixing him with a calculating stare, gave a brief nod as though acknowledging the offer of restitution. Hawkwood nodded back. For Malbreau’s benefit, Hawkwood hoped, honour had been satisfied.

“So.” Hawkwood stroked the mare’s smoothly muscled neck. “That’s settled then.” He looked up. “Well, lead on, Lieutenant. The sooner we report to this garrison of yours, the sooner we can arrange Captain Stuart’s repatriation. That way, he’s out of our hair and ready to bring more of our men back. And if either of us drops by the roadside I’m sure Corporal Despard and his men will be only too happy to manufacture stretchers for the two of us.”

Unseen by Malbreau and the other members of the patrol, Hawkwood and Stuart exchanged another quick glance. It wasn’t hard to interpret the desperate query in Stuart’s eyes. Hawkwood didn’t have to be a mind reader to know that Stuart was asking him what the hell they’d got themselves into. And, more to the point, how the hell were they going to get themselves out?

As Lieutenant Malbreau wheeled his horse about, Hawkwood was asking himself the very same thing.

Chapter 7

They headed north.

Malbreau had told them it was only two miles to the fort. Two miles in which to come up with a plan of escape. Not far enough, Hawkwood calculated bleakly. To make matters worse, he was being herded further away from his destination: Wimereux and the diligence that was to transport him to Paris. So far, the mission was turning into an unmitigated disaster.

He thought about the consequences of their being taken to Mahon. There was a slim chance the subterfuge might work. Ultimately, their fate lay in the hands of the garrison commander, but if the latter was cut from the same cloth as his subordinate, they were in trouble. Hawkwood revised that thought. Deeper trouble. Just how deep remained to be seen.

The path wound its way through the pine trees, rising steadily before finally emerging on to a narrow road bordered to the east by scrubby heathland and to the west and north by a rolling landscape of grass-topped sand dunes which, Hawkwood presumed, sloped all the way back down to the sea. The path was heavily indented with cart tracks and hoof prints, many cloven, indicating it was a well-worn route for cattle as well as horses and probably a main drover road, linking settlements up and down the coast.

As if taking Hawkwood’s direction literally, Malbreau had chosen to ride ahead of them, guiding his horse along the ruts, maintaining point in haughty silence. Hawkwood wasn’t sure about the horse. He couldn’t recall if it was a requirement for a French officer of fusiliers to be mounted or whether it was a personal affectation. He suspected the latter. Either way, it was another facet of Malbreau’s style of command that distanced him from his men, which made Hawkwood wonder if that was why Malbreau had chosen it. Perhaps, Hawkwood thought cynically, the lieutenant considered it more convenient than having his men carry him around in a sedan chair.

Though, in truth, he was thankful for Malbreau’s lack of civility. Had the lieutenant been the garrulous type, anxious to discuss the course of the war or exchange tales of hearth and home, Hawkwood knew the journey to the fort would require constant vigilance on his part to ensure he didn’t say the wrong thing and inadvertently let something slip which would lay open his and Stuart’s deception. Malbreau’s unwillingness to engage in conversation had granted Hawkwood a useful respite in which to think. Or at least, that’s what Hawkwood had supposed when they’d set off.

Blankets over their shoulders, Hawkwood and Stuart made no attempt to communicate with each other, for obvious reasons. In that regard, Hawkwood had drawn the short straw for, as none of the patrol other than Malbreau understood English, Stuart had been left guarding his own thoughts. Unfortunately, this had left Hawkwood, not to his own devices, as he’d first hoped, but prey to interrogation by his new-found friend, Corporal Despard who, in the absence of supervision by his lieutenant, was most interested, almost to the point of sycophancy, in Hawkwood’s fictitious capture and flight from the bastard British and their infamous prison hulks.

It might have been wiser, Hawkwood knew, to have pulled rank and kept the corporal in his place from the outset, in keeping with his masquerade as a French officer. But with Malbreau having removed himself from conversational range, Hawkwood had revised his original thinking and reasoned that, if his disguise was to be believed, a prisoner of war newly restored to his own country would probably want to converse with a fellow soldier – irrespective of rank – if only to avoid marching in a strained silence, which would have made the journey to the fort smack even more of prisoners being transferred under escort. Which might have satisfied Lieutenant Malbreau, Hawkwood reflected, but it wouldn’t have been conducive to either his or Stuart’s sense of well-being. So, remaining alert, he’d given in to the corporal’s enquiries.

Fortunately, Hawkwood had been able to draw on his own experiences to satisfy Despard’s curiosity. The events that had taken place on the hulk, Rapacious, and his association with Lasseur were still vivid in his mind and the physical scars he bore added credence to his story. There had been no need to manufacture detail or events.

Also, as it turned out, the information had flowed both ways. By the time they crested the final rise to find the estuary and the coastline spread out before them, Hawkwood’s store of newly acquired knowledge included the troop numbers and disposition of the Mahon garrison, the calibre of the shore battery’s seven cannon, the proclivities of the garrison commander’s mistress and the name of the best inn and brothel in Ambleteuse. Admittedly not all the intelligence was strictly relevant, but as Hawkwood had learned over the years, one never knew when accumulated facts might prove useful.

The first thing that struck Hawkwood was that there wasn’t a great deal of town to see. What there was of it – a cluster of unexceptional buildings huddled behind a low sea wall on the estuary’s northern shore – lay a little under a mile distant and it didn’t look as if the place could support more than two or three hundred souls at the most. It was even doubtful whether Ambleteuse qualified as a town. Hawkwood thought back to what the corporal had told him. The place had likely been a quiet spot before the army arrived. Despard’s brothel probably hadn’t existed either until the soldiers decided they wanted another form of entertainment to complement their alcohol intake. In that regard the place was undoubtedly no different to any garrison town in England, or anywhere else for that matter. It was the same with soldiers the world over. When they weren’t marching to war they were either fighting among themselves, or whoring or drinking. The only difference lay in the languages they spoke and the colours they fought under.

The fort drew the eye immediately, though it wasn’t nearly as formidable as Hawkwood had been expecting. Neither was it situated in a commanding position on the high ground as so many garrison fortresses were. Instead, the squat, semi-circular construction was perched in lonely isolation on a rocky shelf at the mouth of the river. It looked not unlike a large wide-brimmed hat that had been washed up by the tide and deposited at the edge of the sand. The fort’s curved side butted into the Channel, its thick crenulated battlements forming a defensive barrier against the wind and waves. An oblong, grey-roofed blockhouse dominated the top of the keep. Smoke rose from the single chimney stack and a flag, buffeted by the breeze coming off the sea, flew stiffly above it. The fort was tethered to the shore by a concrete causeway and Hawkwood could see that, come high tide, the garrison would be completely cut off, leaving the troops stranded on their stone island. It didn’t look like anywhere he’d want to be posted in a hurry; which went a long way, he thought, to explaining Lieutenant Malbreau’s churlish disposition.

His gaze shifted to the mouth of the estuary and the jagged bend in the river directly behind it. His eyes moved upstream towards a low stone bridge. There were people in view; early risen townsfolk going about their business, some driving or pushing carts, a few herding livestock, either to market or fresh grazing land, Hawkwood presumed. He could see milking cows, a dozen or so sheep and a small flock of geese. It was a tranquil scene. What he couldn’t see were other fording places, which suggested the bridge was probably one of the district’s main crossing points.

“There she is,” Despard announced without noticeable affection and nodded towards the fort as if it had just materialized out of thin air.

Malbreau neither paused nor bothered to follow his corporal’s gaze but continued on towards the river with all the aloofness of the local squire returning home after a morning’s hack. The indifference, Hawkwood noticed, as they followed Malbreau down the track, appeared to be mutual. If any of the locals were curious at the sight of two civilians flanked by a patrol bearing weapons at shoulder arms, they gave no outward sign. The garrison had been there long enough to ensure that troop movements had become a daily normality; either that or familiarity really did breed contempt.

Approaching the bridge, Hawkwood glanced towards the sea and the fortress outlined against the low-hanging sky. Differing in size but with the same shade of tiles covering its summit, it bore a vague resemblance to the bastion that had guarded the entrance to the Medway and the Sheerness dockyard that had been the mooring place of Rapacious. As omens went, Hawkwood thought, it left a good deal to be desired.

A cry from the direction of the bridge cut into his thoughts. Following the sound, he saw that a cart had come to a skewed halt at the far end, with one of its wheels dislodged. A mule waited patiently between the cart’s shafts as the carter tried to untangle its harness. Half the cart’s produce had been spilled. Several empty wicker cages lay strewn across the road and a dozen squawking hens were making a valiant bid for freedom. Hawkwood wished them luck, though he didn’t think they’d get very far.

And then he saw that another catastrophe was about to ensue. A couple of drovers approaching from the opposite direction had failed to notice the damaged cart. Their half dozen or so head of cattle had obviously been blocking their view and they’d allowed them to get too far in front. With exquisite timing, the beasts had also decided it was time to pick up speed and a minor stampede was under way. On the bridge, the cart driver was too intent on rescuing his goods to have noticed the new threat bearing down upon him.

By the time Malbreau got there the bridge was milling with livestock and a heated altercation had broken out between cart owner and drovers. So much for tranquillity, Hawkwood thought.

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