A Flag of Truce (21 page)

Judging by the way the waves were hitting the bow, HMS
Faron’
s boat was being led out to sea, and at one time the bulk of one of the French warships slid by their rowlocks, clearly being used as a mark by their guides, who then turned in towards the shore. The pace was steady, designed for minimum noise not maximum speed, and with the run of the sea on the quarter the cutter was rocking back and forth until another turn had it lifting and dropping the thwarts.

‘Water’s shelving,’ Costello called quietly from the bow, the truth of that evident as the lead rope went slack and the keel hit soft sand.

Another flint strike came through the gloom and Pearce pointed, before realising that no one could see it. ‘Get ashore and gather by that spark and wait till you have your feet. Mr Harbin, stand off until
first light. If we fail at the breach it is to you we will be running for succour.’

Some had to kneel in the sand for several minutes before they felt safe to stand, with Pearce demanding patience from their nervous escorts, but eventually the volunteers were steady enough to be led off the beach onto a path that took them through a forest of pines. That was narrow and ended well away from the town wall, the same battlements that had once withstood the efforts of Richelieu and his Catholic army. They had been a formidable obstacle then, but time and advancements in artillery had made them useless, so the burghers of the time saw no point in spending money on repairs.

‘
Où est les sentinelles
?’ asked Pearce, the reply sending him towards a windowless hut, from which came the faint glow of a smouldering fire. The next thing that came was snores, and edging close and looking through the gap that covered the place where the walls had collapsed he could just make out three recumbent bodies, one in a chair with his musket across his lap, so obviously the sentry on duty, the other two stretched out in proper sleep on a pair of cots. He crept round to the back, finding the door and establishing with the slightest of creaks that it was not locked on the inside, then he went back to where his party was waiting,
near-invisible
shapes silhouetted against La Rochelle.

‘Mr Farmiloe, Michael, Martin, there are three
fellows in there, all asleep.’ He outlined how they lay to right and left of the door, then added, ‘One each, but render them captured. No killing.’

The gleam of Farmiloe’s dirk also picked up a little of the gaslight from the town, and Pearce would have liked to have seen the boy’s face; was it determined or fearful? It mattered not, as long as he did what was asked. As the trio went to carry out his orders, he thanked the Frenchmen who had brought them this far, and issued them an invitation to go back from whence they had come and join Mr Harbin, pointing out that they would be welcome aboard HMS
Faron
. For that he was thanked, but they declined. They had to get back to the Place de la Revolution.

The muffled grunts from the hut told him his orders in that quarter were being obeyed, and soon Michael was by his side confirming it. ‘Strip them, then tie them up and I need to know when they are due to be relieved. Perhaps if Mr Farmiloe was to play with his dirk, we might find out.’

When he heard what Farmiloe had done with his weapon, Pearce laughed. There was nothing a man would not tell you if you threatened to remove from him his manhood with an instrument that was less than truly sharp. The three replacements came with the dawn, under the command of a fellow slightly more martial in his attire, probably a sergeant. Neither his rank nor his well-maintained uniform and more military bearing saved him from capture,
and he too ended up in the nearby woods, lashed in his smalls to a tree, with a gag in his mouth, able to look at the half-dozen of his men in similar straits.

‘Pick the uniform coat that is closest to your size, and get it on.’

‘Holy Mother of Christ, are they all dwarfs in the place?’ cried Michael, struggling into a coat several sizes too small. Then he picked up the musket; forty-two inches in length, he managed to make it look like a toy, while the whole ensemble, including his hat, made him look like something out of a Raree show that was designed to lampoon the French nation.

‘I’ll not try the boots, John-boy, for as sure as hell is hot they will cripple me.’

It was only when the light came up strong enough that the party was reminded that one of their number was still dressed in his proper uniform. Lieutenant John Pearce unwrapped from his waist the truce flag he had brought with him, and using his sword, cut off a sapling with which to carry it. He then addressed his party.

‘You are my escort. I have been invited to come ashore and witness the activities of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which I fully intend to do. So, Mr Farmiloe, having taken the sergeant’s coat, I ask you to form up the escort ahead of and behind me, and take me to the proposed place of execution.’

The same grey dawn saw Neame and Sykes, with a small party of sailors, aboard
Apollon
, with the master blessing the slight onshore breeze drawn in by the heat of the land. Rigging a scrap of canvas was all they could do, but if the breeze held it would serve. The problem was also compounded by that breeze, for once in motion, with so few men aboard, it would be near impossible to take the way off the ship. If forced to abort what was planned, the only option was to seek to steer her into the shallow northern bay and run it aground.

Harbin had rejoined them in the cutter, only to be told to step a mast and head out to sea to act as a guard boat for the possible sight of a French ship from Rochefort. Digby had calculated the time taken to send a horse-borne message to the admiral there, then added the time needed to act upon it – the port was miles upriver, but there would be some kind of picket boat at the mouth of the estuary, which meant that it was very possible their departure, or their course to clear Oléron, could be impeded. In fact, as he walked his deck, just as it was finished being swabbed and flogged dry, he was cursing himself for agreeing to let Pearce and his party go ashore, and wondering, if his worst fears were realised, if he might be forced to abandon them.

The streets were full of the same bustle and the quay resounded with calls as the locals bargained for the first and best of the morning catch. Pearce and his untidy escort made their way by the noise of their boots, which cleared a path by the mere crack of metal studs on cobbles. Though many a glance was thrown at the British naval officer carrying that truce flag, very few of them were hateful, leading Pearce to speculate again on the difference between the mass of Frenchmen and those at the forefront of radical change.

But it was only an occasional distraction; most of his thoughts were taken up with what he had to do next, which was no easy matter since he had only a very sketchy idea of what he was about to face from the information hurriedly imparted by the men who had come out to HMS
Faron
in their boat. The National Guard was not numerous, some hundred
souls of which a third would be on duty at any one time. Soldiers should not be a problem; they were encamped to the north of the town, facing any threat that might come from the Chouan rebels, which made him wonder – their commander and several of his officers seemed more content to enjoy the ease of a proper bed in La Rochelle than share the discomfort of their military encampment.

The number of carts and load-bearing peasants in the streets forced the party to use the covered walkways, which, while it scattered those wishing to share the pavements, had the benefit of severely reducing the possibility of the men with him being recognised by their French opposite numbers; after all, these were some of the same fellows who had gone aboard
Apollon
off Marseilles, and the disguise they had was far from comprehensive. A forced crossing on the main thoroughfare took them to the Place de la Revolution and to a packed square in which traders had already set out their stalls to sell their wares.

Pearce looked anxiously over their heads to what in his mind had become the oration platform, glad to see that it was empty. No sign of Rafin, who probably would not stir for a time yet. In forcing a passage to the Hotel de Ville, he noticed that most of the assembled crowd were the sailors he had helped to land the day before, and his presence set up a murmur that he could not identify; it was
anger, but at whom was it directed? It seemed to him that a great deal of the looks he was getting were supplicant, not irate; they were being aimed – unfairly as it happened – at his supposed file of National Guards. It was a good thing they could not speak the Erse, a tongue in which Michael was roundly cursing those who blocked his path.

The sketch the unnamed boatman had given him told him the entrance to the prison was inside the main building, a set of steps leading up from the basement cells to the main hall and the long desk at which sat the Revolutionary Tribunal. As a point of entry, it was a choice of last resort; if possible he did not wish to go into the confines of the Hotel de Ville, because inside he would be bound to be outnumbered, and if his lot came face to face with anyone in the same uniform, it would only be a second before the fact they were impostors was announced.

There was a sunken gate on the southern side of the building in an alleyway only wide enough for one cart, down a set of steep steps. It was the way in which food, wood and water were taken in, and the waste they produced removed, while it was also no doubt the exit by which any cadaver of a prisoner who had expired would be extracted. It would be guarded on the inside and he racked his brain to find a way of getting in.

‘Michael, I need to exchange hats and coats.
Stand well back at street level while I go to the bottom of the steps and knock. I want that British uniform to be visible.’

Pearce was not small, but the time it took for Michael to get into his coat was annoying, and there was no way the arms would reach his wrists nor would the lapels come close enough together to look proper, so he was ordered to hand the garments over to Farmiloe, who looked more the part of a British naval officer. His instructions were to stand sideways as Pearce went to the base of the damp steps, which smelt of the corruption caused by human beings and the wind-blown filth that filled the foot of the well. He took out, loaded and cocked his pistol, and balancing on a loose section of the lowest step, which rocked slightly, he banged loudly on the studded oak door.

The voice that replied took several seconds and was querulous, which probably meant the fellow had been snoozing. Standing well to the side as the grille-covered viewing panel was slid back, so the fellow inside could see Farmiloe surrounded by a file of National Guards, Pearce lowered his voice an octave and growled that he had been ordered to bring in the English officer. The response was a protest, but the mention of Citizen Rafin, and the information it was his personal order, proved enough to get the keys rattling and the door unlocked. As it swung open, Pearce barrelled
through and had the pistol under the warder’s chin in a second, grunting in French for him to back away and get down on his knees, an order the lanky fellow obeyed swiftly, with a sob that he be allowed to live.

The rest of his party were quickly through the door, only to be faced, at the end of a twenty-foot corridor, with another nail studded door, locked on the inside, which served as a doubly secure means of ensuring those taken into prison stayed there. A demand to the warder for the key brought a negative response, plus the information it could only be opened from the inside, and it was obvious the only person those on the other side of the door would respond to was now on his knees, trembling before the waving pistol of John Pearce.

‘I hear noises,’ said Martin Dent, who had his ear pressed to one of the points where the ancient oak door failed to meet the jamb, places at which, over the years, it had shrunk. ‘Voices, keys rattling, bit o’ shouting.’

Pearce edged him aside and listened himself, harbouring a deep feeling of despair as he heard what sounded like the movement of several protesting prisoners. Were they moving them earlier than he had hoped? He needed to get through the door now, but if he did he would be in the narrow confines of a prison, probably against greater odds, and while he accepted that every man with him
faced the same risk as he, he felt forced to hesitate, being reluctant to commit them when he had no idea of what they faced.

‘Michael, get that bastard on his feet.’ The Irishman literally lifted him bodily, for although a tall fellow, there was no weight to him, and for good measure he slammed him painfully against the rough stonework of the wall, producing a cry. ‘One good blow, Michael, to let him know what he faces if he does not help us.’

The prominent nose went in an instant, sending forth a fountain of blood and dropping the warder back onto his knees, his hands over his smashed snout. Pearce, leaning over him, had not enjoyed that; much as he hated prison warders and much as, in the past, he had experienced their rapacity and total lack of empathy for anyone who could not bribe them for comforts, it went against his personal grain to indulge in torture. But he suspected that if he did not, the French officers would die; in the balance of things, this fellow’s pain meant little. Harsh words and threats had the man look up at him, and the pistol waving before his bleeding nose.

‘You will go to the door, you will knock and use whatever password is agreed to get us through, or you will die, not by this pistol but at the hands of my friend here, who will tear you to shreds, bit by painful bit.’

Odd that Michael did not speak a word of French, yet he must have sensed what Pearce was about because he grabbed the fellow by the neck of his rough smock, rocked him back and forth against the wall, causing the warder to scream in fear and pain, which was a snuffling affair, coming as it did through the blood he was swallowing. Michael, on command, lifted him again and shoved him towards the door, one hand, when he got there, tightly gripping the fellow’s gonads.

‘Tell him, John-boy, that if he messes us around, I will rip off his balls.’

The knock that followed was clearly a signal, two raps at a time with a gap in between a trio of the same, but there was no response. The small panel in the top did not open, no voice answered and Pearce, with his ear to the gap at the edge, heard no sound where there had been much before. Ordered to knock again, encouraged by an extra squeeze from Michael, the warder repeated the coded request; still no response.

Pearce stood back, looking around him for something to force open the door. His eyes alighted on a set of stout fire irons by a grate, at this time of year out of use. Then he looked at the door again, with hinges and locks not visible, being on the inside, and the gap all round which might provide leverage.

‘Michael, get the poker and jemmy that door open.’

Michael went to stick it into the lock side, only to be stopped by Pearce. ‘The hinge side, Michael. That is the weakest point on a door.’

‘And how would you know that, John Pearce?’ asked Charlie Taverner.

Pearce grinned, though he was still anxious. ‘If you get mixed up with the wrong people, Charlie, even if you don’t want to, they tell you things like this.’

‘Sounds tae me like you’ve seen the inside o’ a place like this afore, sir,’ added Dysart.

‘He’s one of us,’ crowed Martin Dent, with a laugh. ‘A felon by nature, don’t you know that?’

Costello responded in a shocked voice. ‘How has you missed the grating, boy, talking to an officer in that manner!’

‘Too fly, Costello, that’s why, ain’t I, Mr Farmiloe?’

The young mid just blushed as Pearce gave an impatient signal for silence. ‘Jam it in as far as you can, Michael, a foot from the top and the bottom. That is where the hinges will be, and if they are rusted, they will give.’ Doing that, it was clear, even with his great weight and strength, when he bent to the task of heaving, it was not enough. ‘Martin, Dysart, Costello, on one side and pull; Charlie, Rufus, push with Michael. Mr Farmiloe,’ he added, pointing to the warder, now crouching against the wall, again holding his face,
‘put your bayonet by that bastard’s throat.’

Heave as they might, it was to little effect, and Pearce realised they needed something with which to hammer the metal point further in. ‘Part of the bottom step leading to the street is loose, someone fetch it. Use the other fire irons to dislodge it. The rest, get your bayonets into the gap and see if you can enlarge it.’

‘Noise, John-boy.’

‘What choice, Michael?’

The Irishman shrugged; there was none. Odd then that on the fourth blow with the granite of the bottom step the sound of a key came through the wood, and in a second the door swung open. A ruddy-faced fellow came through, and, seeing a group of National Guards in various stages of dress and undress, demanded what in the name of creation was going on. So much for security, as the one in the sergeant’s uniform coat put his pistol to the man’s chest, and O’Hagan, in nothing more than his shirt, swung a blow that knocked the bugger right off his feet.

‘You weren’t hoping to talk to him, John-boy, were you?’

‘If I was, there’s no point now. Get the keys.’

Through the door they entered another corridor with cells off to one side. The interior of those stone-lined chambers showed evidence of recent occupation: unconsumed food and the open ditty
bags and sea chests containing the possessions the French officers had brought ashore. Keys in hand, Pearce made his way to the end, ordering that the two warders should be gagged and shoved in a cell. There was yet another door, and when he put his ear to the join, Pearce could feel a slight, cold draught on his cheek. Slowly, he inserted each of a dozen keys, easing each one round till it stopped, until he found the right one, which went through the well-oiled levers. Indicating that his men should be quiet, he eased open the door to be faced with another set of stone steps leading up to a beamed ceiling.

From where he stood he could see the back of the top half of a National Guard and he could hear voices, or to be more precise one voice, that of Rafin, vilifying his prisoners, heaping every insult in the revolutionary vocabulary on their heads. He tried to imagine those being harangued, hoping most of them were looking at their accuser with defiance. Another voice protested, which Pearce recognised as that of Jacquelin, pleading he was no traitor, but a true son of the Revolution. At least Rafin stopped to listen to him, as the captain of the
Orion
cried out the tale of resistance in Toulon; how he had led his men to refuse to serve, of his reluctance to surrender to the British at any time, and of how only those cowards who could not face the ultimate sacrifice demanded by the Revolution
had stopped him from running his ship into Marseilles, regardless of the consequences.

That was his undoing. Pearce had removed his hat and crawled silently up the steps to a point where, through the guard’s legs, he could just see the long table at which Rafin sat. The representative on mission was sitting when Pearce first saw him, playing with his moustaches again, a look of contempt on his face as he listened to Jacquelin. ‘Ultimate sacrifice’ had him leaping to his feet, screaming and damning the man for the coward he had to be if he was not prepared to lead by example, the implication being that if Jacquelin had laid down his own life, others would have been inspired by his example. Not being able to see the accused was frustrating; a man who no doubt felt he had reasonable grounds to be freed. He did not know the beast with which he had been brought to grapple. Pearce could imagine him though – the crushing truth getting through: everything he had believed in was false; there was no
Libertié, Equalitié, Fraternité,
and certainly no justice.

Rafin calmed himself and began to speak in a mocking tone, detailing the misdeeds of these men who had once served King Louis. How could any decent citizen be sure of their motives? Had they not come from Toulon as agents of those traitors in that port to undermine the Revolution in another, and used the desire of the true people of France, the
men they led, as an excuse to betray? He then went into a flowery peroration, detailing with little modesty his own credentials as a man who had suffered under the monarchy, though in truth it did not sound, to Pearce, like much in the way of discomfort. The audience – there must be one or no speech was necessary – listened in silence to a catalogue of self-aggrandisement.