A Shred of Honour (4 page)

Elphinstone frowned, looking at him closely again, as if trying to place him.’ I know that. I’ll go back and see if I can muster some reinforcements. Your job is to make contact with the enemy, and give the men I bring up a position from which to fight, which I suggest would be better achieved at the double.’

There were dozens of questions. But Markham guessed, by the steely look in Elphinstone’s eye as the Scotsman peered at him, that he would be wasting his time to ask them. He saluted slowly, and ordered his men back on to their feet.

‘I’ve seen you somewhere before, I’m sure of it. I rarely forget a face.’ Elphinstone shrugged when Markham didn’t respond. ‘You’d best be on your way.’

The Bullocks doubled smartly to annoy the Lobsters, not to please Markham. The marines, in turn, were determined not to lag behind. Rivulets of sweat
streaming
down inside his uniform, he didn’t care. Nor did he look behind him to see how either were faring. He was too busy with his own worries, the greatest of which was the prospect of being required to lead these men into battle.

He was on land now, his element, without the burden of ignorance. He knew what to do. As a youngster, even before he’d put on a uniform, he’d received a depth of training denied to most of his contemporaries. Indeed, he’d grown up almost as a military brat. The break in his martial career hadn’t dented that, and service in the Empress Catherine’s army had only honed skills he’d first been taught in the Americas.

The heat was intense and getting worse, with clouds of dust thrown up by their feet making life hell for the stragglers. Good order was less important than speed. Elphinstone had made it clear, and this was proved by his map, that failure to hold the French at Ollioules would mean trying to stop them on the very outskirts of Toulon, which as yet had no troops to man the defensive perimeter.

The youngster, Yelland, was ordered to remove his coat and share out his equipment, then sent ahead to reconnoitre. When, after about an hour, in which he’d only allowed his men one stop, Yelland came back into view, Markham held up his sword to call a halt, fighting to stay upright himself as his men collapsed where they stood.

‘You may drink some water, two sips each.’

Yelland was in a worse state, his face running with sweat and his chest heaving. Markham gave him a drink from his own canteen before he asked him to report.

‘The village is about a mile ahead, sir. Not a soul in sight, that I could see. But it does have a well full of water.’

‘Any sign of the enemy?’

‘None, though there’s a rate of abandoned equipment on the road leading to the village. I went clear to the other end, and it carries straight on until it disappears into a deep gorge.’

Markham looked at his map. Ollioules was just a
hamlet
, a post stop to change horses on the way to Marseilles. The problem was simple. He had no idea what lay further on, beyond the gorge that Yelland had mentioned.
Perhaps
, even though the youngster thought the village deserted, he could find a local inhabitant to tell him how matters lay. He held out his canteen again.

‘Take this. Get to the other side of the village, no more than two hundred yards up the road, so you can keep an eye on the entrance to that gorge. Wait there till I join you.’

Yelland grabbed it and ran off, as Markham shouted to the rest to get to their feet. The curses and groans resurfaced long before they resumed their double march. It wasn’t long before he saw the debris that Yelland had remarked on; cartouches, pikes, casks and the odd
musket
dropped by the roadside. Elphinstone had said
nothing
about the enemy retreating, only advancing, which was strange.

The double pace quickly brought the stunted church tower and the rooftops of the village into sight. Calling another halt, he scrambled up the nearest knoll and examined the terrain. The hillsides were low and undulating to the south. But just on the other side of the village a rampart of rocks formed an impassable barrier. To the north, on the inland side, they steepened considerably until they became an unclimbable escarpment. That accorded with Elphinstone’s rough map, which showed that the only route an army could take from Marseilles lay through Ollioules.

He needed a defensive position on the Toulon road. That had to be on the inland hillside, and it had to
overlook
the road. There was some question about the range of the shortened marine muskets, but his soldiers, even if they were, as he suspected, indifferent shots, would be adequate at volley fire from a defensive position. He
spotted
what he was seeking ahead, a cluster of heavy rocks around the base of a gully. They could be levered closer together and provide some cover if he was forced into a hasty withdrawal. Really worrying, should the enemy appear in strength, there was nothing behind that: neither decent cover on the long straight Roman road, nor the security of more troops to provide support.

His men were spread out over a long stretch of road. Some of the marines had kept pace with the leaders, while a few of his soldiers, supposedly trained to this, were well to the rear. He called on them to close up, fretting while the most laggardly joined. These included the two pugilists, Schutte and Rannoch. He pointed to the spot he’d selected up ahead.

‘Since you two are keen to see who’s the strongest, get up that slope and shift those rocks to the head of the gully. I want them as a rampart at right angles to the road. And if you can clear any cover from the other side it will help.’

‘Help who?’ growled Rannoch.

He’d expected it, so there was no shock in the man’s. insubordinate response. Aboard ship he had thought he was going to have to train these men into submission. Now circumstances had changed. He was going to have to blood them, no easy task.

Everyone was watching him, seeing how he would react to the challenge from a man half of them considered a natural leader. He could shout, quite possibly to no avail. Yet to plead would prove fatal. So, without the faintest idea of the effect, he smiled, and spoke as quietly as his heaving chest would allow.

‘Don’t ever question my orders, d’you hear? It’s not your place. But since this is all new, just this once, I’ll tell
you. There are Frenchmen coming this way, how many we don’t know. The first place we’re going to stop them is somewhere on the road past the village. Then we’re going to make them pay to get through it, since it’s the only available route to Toulon. And after that, we will block the road so that they have to outflank us. By that time, I expect we will be reinforced.’

Rannoch was glaring at him, in his mind no doubt working up to a refusal. Frobisher’s sword sang as Markham swung it hard, gratified to see the sudden flash of shock in the soldier’s eye. The tip sliced across the strap holding his musket, parting it so that the weapon clattered onto the hard surface of the road.

‘You’ll need to take that off,’ he said, flicking the sword so that it was pointed to the buckle on his belly. ‘Would you like me to remove your pack as well?’

They locked stares, Rannoch’s eyes deep green and surprisingly feline for a man of his bulk. Markham felt like a fieldmouse about to be swiped by a great paw. But he held his own look steady, along with the slight, detached smile on his face, trying to convey two things; that he was not afraid, and that he was prepared to kill to be obeyed. He spoke to the Dutchman as soon as Rannoch’s hand moved to undo his belt.

‘You too, Schutte. And I want a result. If I find you’ve been scrapping, I’ll break you on the first wheel I can find, with a thousand lashes per man. The rest of you, follow me.’

The village hardly warranted the title. On the far side of a dry riverbed, over an ancient stone bridge, it
consisted
of a single dusty street, located at the point where the valley narrowed to form a shallow defile. Half a dozen shuttered houses lined the dusty, rutted road on either side of the central square, all empty. The church, square and plain Romanesque, stood equally bereft on one side, the tower too low to provide a long-range vantage point towards Marseilles. The post house, the only other
substantial
building, stood directly opposite, with a well beaten track that led down an alley, the dusty paddock at the rear just visible. A couple of undernourished horses were up against the fence. The sound of the soldiers’ boots, echoing off the stones around the well, startled them, and from somewhere close by, a mule brayed its response.

‘Keep going,’ he yelled, as the leaders stopped by the well. Others had done so before them, since the stone surround was stacked with debris. ‘We’ll send someone back for water.’

A few more houses, then the floor of the valley opened out again, onto a narrow, rising hill bisected by the road. The crest, three hundred yards from the village, was some hundred yards across, hemmed in by the steep
surrounding
hills. It looked a good place to defend, but with his limited resources, a shade too wide. The landscape
provided
little shelter, barring a couple of dry stone walls shaded by stunted trees on the northern side, about fifty yards from the point where the road topped the crest.

‘Packs off, all of you. Get into the shade of those walls.’

He didn’t wait to see them comply but marched on till he breasted the rise. The road led straight on, undulating slightly, with no sign of any enemy, until it ran into a narrow gorge in the massive limestone crags that rose up half a mile distant. The sloping lea, which widened out to form a circular pasture, was dotted with trees and edged with fallen boulders. But none of them stood close enough to the crest to provide decent cover. Anyone
wishing
to take this crest would require to advance, uphill, over several hundred yards of open ground, making it a place that could be held, easily, given adequate forces.

Yelland, seeing him against the skyline, stepped out from behind one of the trees and waved. The temptation to push on was strong. But his men were tired from double marching in the heat. To keep them going in this
kind of weather, with the sun full up and little shade, might render even the good ones useless. Although the position he occupied was too shallow to be perfect, it might be better than anything he’d find off Elphinstone’s map.

But there was another reason. All that equipment on the road, and around the well, indicated a force in retreat. Judging by the amount of abandoned kit, it was one that certainly outnumbered his own. It was hard to tell how long it had been since they’d passed this way, and with no-one in the houses of Ollioules he couldn’t ask. But one thing he did suspect. If they discovered they were being pursued they’d turn and fight in a place of their own choosing, and that was a battle he couldn’t win.

He
waved to Yelland again, then span on his heel and made his way back. Halsey, the marine corporal, in the absence of Schutte, was now in charge of the Lobsters. He knew his name, but struggled to remember that of the taller man next to him.

‘Leech,’ Halsey replied, when he was forced to enquire.

‘Make your presence known to Yelland, give him some water, then take up a position on the blind side of the crest. Stay low and keep him in view. If you see Yelland coming towards us, double back and get me. I’ll relieve you both in an hour.’

‘Water bottles off,’ he snapped, his eyes raking the rest of somnolent men. ‘Take a good drink now. Tully, Hollick,’ he called to the two nearest Bullocks.

‘He’s Hollick, I’m Tully,’ the man replied, without
adding
a ‘sir’ or making any attempt to stand up. Added to that his pock-marked, ugly face had a sour, insubordinate expression.

Markham thought hard, but then had to admit the man was right, which made him clench his jaw in anger as he issued his instructions. ‘On your feet, both of you.’

‘Christ, there’s no peace,’ Tully moaned.

But he’d begun to rise, so Markham let that pass.
Hollick, his fair skin burnt red, hesitated for a split second before doing likewise. He had them collect the water bottles, then led them back to the village to fill them. Once they were fully occupied, Markham turned to look around. It was odd that the place was deserted. Not that he imagined it ever bustling, but there should have been someone around.

The Provençal architecture was dissimilar, but it still reminded him of those small Loyalist townships in the Americas, hamlets that would empty as soon as a red coat was sighted on the horizon, the people taking to the woods until the soldiers had passed. He’d been told the locals, afraid of the Terror, had invited the British ashore. Perhaps that didn’t apply to the people of Ollioules. Or maybe just the sight of one armed man, of an unknown nationality, was enough to send them into flight.

‘Tully, I’m going to see what food there might be in the inn. Come and tell me when you’ve finished.’ That was answered with a slow nod. Markham was tired and hot, and well aware that imbuing this lot with discipline was going to be an uphill struggle. All of which added real force to his response.

‘The correct response is “yes, sir”, and don’t you ever forget to use it again. If we retreat, I intend to poison that well. The quickest way, I’ve found, is to tip a dead body into the water.’

What emerged from Tully’s throat wasn’t the right response, but it was close enough to satisfy a man more interested in a drink than the exercise of authority.
Taking
his hat off as he ducked under the low lintel, he could feel the coolness of the interior on the rim of sweat that circled the top of his head. It was dark, too, after the bright sunlight of the roadway, so his eyes took time to adjust. The empty flagons that littered the tables engendered curiosity, which was immediately forgotten as the assailant shot towards him.

If they’d come at him together he wouldn’t have stood a hope in hell, and he was glad that the first one tried to crown him with a bottle rather than get him with a knife. The backlift required to put any force into the blow slowed what was intended and gave Markham just enough time to duck under it, so that it took him on the shoulder rather than the head. He still felt a sharp pain followed by a spreading numbness, but the amount of effort used by the attacker knocked the bottle out of his hand, and it clattered onto the stone floor and shattered.

Markham had already managed one loud shout, praying that the combination of noises would bring him help. He could only see two men, but in the dingy interior there could be dozens. He got his arms round the waist of the bottle smasher and turned him towards the second man, whose access was impeded by a table. He was carrying a knife, of the small variety, sharp, vicious and curved, used for gutting and filleting fish. Frightened that he was about to skewer his companion, he pulled the weapon to one side, which, surprisingly, threw him off balance.

Loosening one hand, Markham struck viciously for the groin, jabbing first. Then feeling the loose sack of skin, he took a tight grip. His assailant shot bolt upright, emitting a scream, his lips pulled back to show a fine set of white teeth. Markham tried to get his free hand across to unsheathe his sword, but his own arm was in the way.

The man with the knife had staggered round the table and was coming at his unprotected side when help finally arrived. Tully, standing on the elevated doorstep swung
his boot high and took him right on the side of the head. Markham had a fleeting impression of a swarthy
complexion
, dark curly hair and slightly glazed eyes, before the light went out of them and the attacker crashed to the floor. Tully stepped forward, his bayonet out, and dropped to one knee.

‘No!’

The shout made his fist tighten even more, producing another scream from the man he was holding. But it failed to stop Tully, who in one swift movement jabbed forward with the eighteen-inch blade and cut his victim’s throat from the inside out. Vaguely aware of Hollick standing in the doorway, Markham pushed hard, sending his attacker reeling across a table. The distance thus opened allowed him to get his sword out, and the tip, laid on the man’s ribcage, just above his fine waistcoat, removed any notion of continued fighting from his mind.

‘Hollick, take charge here.’

As soon as the trooper responded, his own bayonet replacing the sword, Markham walked over to look at the other assailant, now on his back with a stream of blood running from his neck on to the stone floor. He noticed that he was dressed like a servant, his clothing of quite good quality without being as fine as that of the man on the table.

‘Damn you, Tully, there was no need to kill him.’

‘Safest way, I reckon,’ Tully replied. There was no
passion
in his voice, nor emotion in his pig-like eyes.

‘Come with me. Hollick, keep that man still.’

There wasn’t much to search. The place consisted of no more than a front parlour and a cramped backroom that doubled as a bedroom-cum-kitchen. The girl, more of a child really, was lying with her back to them curled in a ball, her naked body showing even in the grim light the marks where she’d been beaten and assaulted. Markham bent down and touched her, producing a fearful shudder which ran right through her body, accompanied by a
whimpered plea to be left alone. Turning to the soldier, he saw a look in his eyes that, ranging over the slim, bruised body, spoke volumes about what touched his emotions.

‘Out, Tully!’ snapped Markham. ‘Help Hollick get something round that fellow to restrain him.’

‘What you got in mind for her?’ Tully asked, his voice rasping and low.

‘Protection, man,’ Markham replied, reaching for a threadbare blanket. ‘And something to cover her shame.’

‘She’s only a Frenchie, sir. I thought we was here to fight them.’

Markham stood up and faced Tully. ‘The men, soldier. Not the women, and certainly not a young girl. Do as I say and get out!’

He was again faced with that look, the attitude of a man contemplating disobedience. If Tully thought
himself
a dissembler he was wrong. Markham could see, in his eyes, all the thoughts that flickered through his mind. The bloodstained bayonet was still in his hand. The man who stood between him and a chance to assuage his lust would be so easy to kill. Better still, the people to blame were to hand, one with his throat already cut. There was an air of desperation about him. Weeks at sea, without even the sight of a woman, had made him very dangerous indeed.

‘Out,’ said Markham softly. ‘There’ll be a whorehouse in Toulon for what you’re after.’

Tully blinked and Markham didn’t, and that was what made the difference. He took a pace backwards. ‘There’s a mule around somewhere. Find it, we’ll need it to carry the water back.’

‘Sir,’ said Tully softly, before spinning on his heel and striding out. As he bent to reassure the girl that she was now safe, he heard him say something to Hollick. The walls made it indistinct, but it sounded remarkably like ‘all officers are the same, right selfish bastards’. The girl’s dark brown eyes, responding to the soft words spoken in
her native tongue, fixed on his face. Whatever she saw there turned her whimpers to sobs, and tears streamed down the smooth olive skin of her face. Markham covered her with the blanket, and left.

Hollick was standing in the same place, the man still splayed on his back across the table. He opened a shutter, filling the room with light. There were flagons
everywhere
, some empty, others half full, and their prisoner was no longer an indistinct shape, but a formed human being. Black-haired, carefully curled, with a thin
moustache
, he had a narrow face with sharp features, and the kind of hooked nose that hinted at Arab or Levantine blood. His thin red lips were parted, with a fine line of dried saliva where they’d joined. He was breathing
deeply
, eyes shut tight, as if trying to draw moisture into his dry mouth.

The quality of his garments became even more
apparent
in the light; high quality linen, fine cambric waistcoat, good, if dusty boots and breeches so tight they were like a second skin. Markham saw a green silk coat and sword belt across a chair which he assumed to belong to his prisoner. In the inside pocket of the coat he found several official-looking letters, all addressed to a Pierre-Michel Fouquert. He was about to read the first one when Tully came back from his search for the donkey, his boots
ringing
on the flagstoned floor.

‘There’s a poor sod out the back lashed to the fencing with his balls cut off.’

‘Dead?’

‘Wouldn’t want to be alive without his nuts, would he, sir?’

Markham jabbed the tip of his sword into the man on the table, which brought his eyes open. Black and
bloodshot
, they were nevertheless steady and full of hate, with an intensity that, allied to his other features, gave him a demonic look. What he’d seen in the back room, added to what Tully had just reported, indicated he might well be
like that. He struggled, rather feebly, to move. Given the number of empty bottles in the place, it was a fair guess that he was suffering from the effects of too much drink, not all of which had worn off.

‘Get him upright and take him outside.’

The Frenchman started moaning as soon as the soldiers grabbed his shirt-front, the supplication softening his features. The protests began as he was dragged outside. They were only halfway to the back of the building before he started sobbing, as though he’d worked out what was in store for him. The sight of the body, wrists and neck tied to the split wood fence, its feet splayed over the deep pool of mixed flesh and blood, brought forth the first hint of a scream. Tully hit him, a blow that swept across his moustachioed mouth, jerking his head to one side and producing an immediate flow of bright red froth from the split lower lip. Hollick, hanging onto another post, was trying not to retch.

‘Cut down that poor fellow and put this sod in his place,’ said Markham, his voice and manner as cold as ice. ‘And as soon as you’ve done that, undo those fine breeches he’s wearing and show him your bayonet.’

That instrument, dull gleaming steel playing
tantalisingly
around the curled black hairs of his exposed groin, had the Frenchman gabbling replies to Markham’s question in a manner that guaranteed truth. He confirmed ownership of the letters Markham was waving, and that his name was Fouquert. He claimed to be a French naval officer, who’d been unsure which cause to follow, that of the Republicans or the Monarchists. The Royalist
commander
in Toulon, Admiral Trugueff, had been deposed. When Hood threatened that any warship which hadn’t landed its powder would be treated as an enemy, Fouquert and his men had gathered muskets and pikes, then abandoned both vessels and forts. He’d brought the main body here, then sent them on to Marseilles while he waited for the stragglers.

‘How far behind are these stragglers?’ It was hard to shrug in that position, but Fouquert managed it. If they’d been on the road, seeing his soldiers approaching, they must have taken to the hills. ‘How many men did you bring out of Toulon?’

The reply produced such a shock in his lieutenant that Tully’s bayonet, acting like an extension of Markham’s surprise, drew blood from the inside of the man’s thigh. Both soldiers then looked at him hard, wondering what had produced such a response.

‘According to this turd there are five thousand
well-armed
French sailors roaming around these hills, mostly in front of us, God be thanked, but some behind.’

The figure really wasn’t that surprising. Hood’s fleet, if you included tenders and supply ships, was manned by more than twenty thousand sailors. The French
Mediterranean
fleet would need that many, if not more, to be effective.

‘I say we make it one less,’ said Hollick, leaning forward so that his face was less than an inch from Fouquert’s, the words delivered in a growling, manly fashion to cover his recent, retching response to the sight of dead man’s blood.

Tully waved the bayonet before the terrified
Frenchman
’s eyes, so close that Hollick had to pull back. ‘You ain’t got the stomach for cold death, mate. Best leave it to a man.’

Hollick, upright again, had his own bayonet out in a flash. ‘Damn you, Tully, I can do it as easy as you.’

‘Never,’ the older soldier replied. Then he spat,
deliberately
, at the prisoner.

Fouquert, convinced he was about to be stabbed,
protested
, pleaded that what had happened here had been none of his doing. That even as an officer he could hardly be expected to control men who’d run away from their duty. Markham, unsure if he was lying, told him to shut up, then ordered Tully and Hollick to take a step
back. He continued to question him, noticing that as Fouquert answered his black eyes never left his
interrogator
’s face.

There was intelligence there, that was obvious. With each question his fear was evaporating, to be replaced by a rather superior demeanour that began with those same eyes, but soon spread to his thin cheeks. Markham watched, fascinated in a detached way, as they relaxed, soon followed by the clenched jawbone. The lips, hitherto compressed, eased to become full and red. The
Frenchman
knew that for all the bluff, and the threatening behaviour of the men he had with him, this British officer was not going to kill or mutilate him. By the time he’d finished his interrogation, there was something very close to a smirk on those same red lips, a look which seemed to convey that should the positions be reversed, Fouquert wouldn’t hesitate.

Markham had somehow surrendered the initiative, but was at a loss to know how to regain it. Short of torture, he had few options, and he was neither prepared to indulge in that, nor turn the kind of blind eye that would let Tully loose.

‘Leave him tied up here. If we’re reinforced and hold out, I’ll send him back to Toulon. There’s his own kind there to find out the truth and deal with him.’

‘What if we have to run?’ asked Tully, his eyes narrowed.

‘In that case, soldier, I’ll make you his keeper. He’s an officer and a Republican, who probably cut up this poor sod, which in Toulon could well mean the rope. But to us, he’s a prisoner of war, and will be treated as such. If he dies before we get back then you’ll probably hang in his place.’

He was tempted to go on, to say that they were British soldiers, not renegade Republican sailors. To tell them of the effect of unlicensed and unbridled rapine on a local populace. To explain that he’d seen it in America, during
a war so unpopular that the King, unable to field enough men from his own land, had been forced to recruit German mercenaries to fight the colonists.

That was when Markham had to shut his eyes, fight to block out the personal memories, those that only
normally
came to him at night, producing an overwhelming sense of failure and loss. He succeeded only by opening those eyes again, and observing in the faces of both Hollick and Tully an inquiring look.

‘We need the locals to trust us,’ he said, his eyes ranging around the high escarpments that hemmed in the village. ‘Don’t be fooled by those empty houses. The people who lived in them will be in the hills around here, perhaps so close they’re watching us now. Killing their own kind won’t make them trust us.’ He kicked viciously, and suddenly, at the ground, sending a cloud of dust into the prisoner’s smirking face. ‘Even a shit like this.’

Spinning round, he saw that the donkey and the two under-nourished horses had retreated to the other side of the paddock, as far away as possible from the smell of blood. ‘Get that donkey down to the well.’

Tully stepped forward and drew his bayonet gently across the Frenchman’s throat, then laughed at the look his action produced.

‘Move,’ said Markham, softly.