Soldier of Fortune (6 page)
Read Soldier of Fortune Online
Authors: Edward Marston
'That's
very kind of you.'
'It's
scant reward for what you learnt in Paris.'
'Will
I have time for any leisure, Your Grace?'
'Yes,
Daniel. We'll sail from Harwich at the end of next week. That will give you
almost eleven days.' His smile was warm. 'Do you think you could find a way to
amuse yourself in London for that length of time?'
Daniel
chuckled. 'I'm certain that I can.'
'Then
enjoy yourself while you can because there'll be little opportunity for
dalliance once the army is on the march once more.'
'I
know.'
'When
hostilities do resume,' warned Marlborough, 'you'll have to take great care not
to meet General Salignac on the battlefield.'
'Why
is that, Your Grace?' 'Put yourself in his place, man. He'll be eager to wreak
a terrible revenge on the person who seduced his wife.'
'I
have no worries at all on that score.'
'Really?'
'No,'
said Daniel. 'The general has absolutely no idea who I am.'
Using
their forged passports, the two men boarded the ship at Calais.
'We'll
never find him,' moaned Seurel. 'It's a waste of time.'
'We
must
find him,' said Catto, speaking in faultless French. 'We've tracked him this
far and we'll pick up his trail in England. The general will not condone
failure, Frédéric. If we go back empty-handed, we'll pay dearly.'
'How
do we know that he crossed the Channel?'
'I've
described him to three different port officials and they remembered him
clearly. Daniel Rawson may not have used his real name but he definitely sailed
from Calais.'
'How
could you describe him when you've never even seen him?'
'The
general's wife has seen him,' said Catto with a snigger, 'and she was in a
position to note the most private details about the man. We not only know
exactly what he looks like, we have his name and his occupation.'
'Didn't
Madame Salignac say he was a merchant?'
'That
was only a ruse. What merchant takes a beautiful woman to bed in order to ask
about her husband's movements in the army?'
'I
see what you mean.'
'As
soon as he realised what had been going on, the general knew who Daniel Rawson
really was - a British spy!'
Seurel
cackled. 'A lucky one at that - I wouldn't mind spying on Madame Salignac.
She'd set any man's blood racing.'
'Nobody
would ever get close enough to her again,' said Catto. 'The general has seen to
that. His wife might as well be in a convent.'
'Mon dieu
!
What a terrible waste!'
Frédéric
Seurel made a vivid gesture with both hands to reinforce his meaning. He was a
short, ugly, thickset man in his forties with dark hair and beard. He had been
an accomplished thief in his youth but a harsh prison sentence had made him
resolve to respect the law in future. Hardened by ten years in the French army,
he had been invalided out when badly wounded in the thigh. He still walked with
a pronounced limp.
Charles
Catto, by contrast, was a tall, slender, lithe man in his early thirties with
fair hair, a conventionally handsome face and a plausible manner. Born and
brought up in England, he preferred to fight in a French regiment and it was
there that he had caught the eye of General Armand Salignac. Because he was so
alert, reliable and resourceful, Catto had been employed by the general in all
sorts of secret missions, with an unbroken record of success. None of his
assignments, however, had had the importance attached to the present one. Catto
and Seurel had been left in no doubt about that.
There
was a burst of activity aboard. Urged on by a stentorian voice, the crew
hoisted the canvas, pulled up the gangplank, cast off and made ready to sail on
the morning tide. Seurel was uneasy.
'I
hate being at sea,' he said.
'Think
of the benefits, Frédéric.'
'What
benefits? Feeling sick, unable to touch food, spewing up my guts time and
again? Where is the benefit in all that, Charles?'
'At
the end of our voyage,' said Catto. 'We catch our prize.'
'I
wonder.'
'Trust
me. I know how to stalk a man.'
'We
don't even know that he is in England,' said Seurel.
'Yes,
we do.'
'How?'
'A
spy will always run back to his paymaster,' said Catto, 'to pass on what
information he has found out. My guess is that Daniel Rawson will have headed
straight for the Duke of Marlborough. We know for certain that the Duke is
still in England. He won't sail for Holland until next week at the earliest.'
Seurel
was startled. 'Are you sure of that, Charles?'
'We
have our own spies.'
'Yes,
you've been one of them in the past.'
'I'm
pleased to say that I have,' admitted Catto proudly. 'I've enlisted in more
than one British regiment in order to gauge its strength and ferret out its
marching orders. If they ever caught up with me - and I'll make sure they don't
- I'd be shot as a deserter.'
'You're
like me,' said Seurel, spitting over the bulwark then wiping his mouth with the
back of his hand. 'You enjoy danger.'
'I
thrive on it.'
The
wind was freshening now and filling the sails. As the ship gradually picked up
speed, it began to tilt and ride over the waves. A rhythmical creak set in as
the timbers met the relentless force of the sea. Catto was interested to watch
the sailors going about their duties but Seurel pulled a face and rubbed his
queasy stomach. He tried to take his mind off his discomfort by renewing the conversation.
'There's
something I never understand about you, Charles,' he said, brow furrowing. 'Why
does an Englishman fight for France?'
'I
prefer to be on the winning side.'
'Is
that the only reason?'
'No,
Frédéric,' replied the other. 'The French army has been the finest in the world
for a very long time and it is a privilege to serve under its flag. What really
appeals to me, however, is that I can fight alongside men of my own religion.'
'You
are a Roman Catholic?' said Seurel in surprise.
'I
joined the army for the pleasure of killing Protestants.'
'So
did I. Each bullet I fired was in the name of the Pope.'
'My
family was as devout as any in Rome. It did not make us welcome in England. We
were persecuted because of our beliefs. My grandfather died in prison, my
father was driven into exile when King William sat on the throne. Who can ever
forget what that butcher did to the Catholics in Ireland?' he asked with sudden
vehemence. 'Those who talked of toleration showed precious little of it during
his reign. We were glad to leave England. We settled in Beauvais and I grew up
there. I look upon France as my home.'
'Me,
too,' said Seurel. 'I wish I was there now.'
'We're
still in French waters.'
'I
like to have solid ground beneath my feet.'
'You'll
have that soon enough,' Catto assured him. 'As for the benefits I mentioned,
just remember how much we'll be paid for this little adventure.'
'Only
if we catch up with Daniel Rawson.'
'We
will, I promise you.' 'What if he has left England?'
'We
follow him wherever he goes, Frédéric.' He patted his purse. 'We are
well-provided with funds. He can run but he will never escape us. Sooner or
later, we'll find him.' 'And then?'
'We
obey the general's orders to the letter. We kill Daniel Rawson and take him
certain proof of the man's death.' 'To do that, we'd have to carry his dead
body back with us.' 'There's a much easier way than that, Frédéric.' Seurel
looked blank. 'Is there?'
'We
simply cut off his head,' said Catto. 'That will suffice.'
It
was a regular pilgrimage. Whenever he returned to England, Daniel Rawson always
found time to visit the county where he had been born and where his father had
been executed for his part in the Monmouth rebellion. He reached Somerset that
afternoon to find it gilded by the sunshine and scoured by a stiff breeze that
blew his horse's mane almost vertical. Daniel was prompted by curiosity as well
as by a sense of duty. He wanted to see how the farm they had once owned was
now faring, and if anyone in the vicinity still remembered him. Most of all, he
wanted to see again the fields, hills, woods, ponds and rivers he had known and
loved as a boy.
As
he rode along, he was struck by how different it all was to Holland. When he
and his mother had sailed to Amsterdam, they had left rolling countryside
behind them and settled in a land that was uniformly flat and menaced by the
sea. Only the ingenuity of Dutch engineers kept the waters at bay. Instead of
farming the broad acres of Somerset, Daniel had moved to the busiest port in
Europe, a clean, well- ordered, prosperous city that taught him to live another
kind of life altogether. But he never forgot the joy of growing up in rural
seclusion in England even though that joy had been rudely curtailed.
After
visiting his old farm, he went on to Chedzoy and Westonzoyland, deliberately
crossing the site of the battle that had led to Nathan Rawson's capture. It
looked so peaceful and untrammelled now. Where scores of rebel soldiers had met
gruesome deaths, cattle grazed unconcernedly. Thick green grass covered the
mass graves into which brave men of the West Country had been tumbled after
they had been shot or cut down in the searing heat of battle. Daniel could
almost hear the thunder of the cavalry, the rattle of musket fire, the angry
clash of weaponry, the roar of artillery, the frantic neighing of wounded
horses and the heart-rending cries of agony from dying men. Sedgemoor would
always be a field of slaughter to him.
It
was ironic. Nathan Rawson had been hanged for fighting against a royal army
that was led, in part, by the very man whom his son now served. Daniel saw no
betrayal in that. John, Lord Churchill, as he had been at the time, had earned
his respect by condemning the sergeant who had tried to rape Daniel's mother
and by presenting the boy with the sword he had used to kill the man. Three
short years after the battle, Daniel had returned to England as a drummer boy
in a Dutch army led by William of Orange. King James II had been deposed in a
bloodless revolution and Churchill, having fought in the royal army at
Sedgemoor, had adroitly changed his allegiance.
Daniel
had come to see it as a clever tactical move rather than the action of a
traitor. Survival was all. Like any good commander, Churchill had known which
way the wind was blowing. In fact, his military career had later stalled under
William and Mary, only to be revived in spectacular fashion when Queen Anne
came to the throne. As the Duke of Marlborough, he was now captain-general of
the forces of the Grand Alliance, fighting against the very army in which he
had once served. In waging a war against France, Marlborough could put into
practice all he had learnt from his mentor, the great Marshal Turenne, during
the war in the Netherlands. At his disposal were soldiers, like Daniel Rawson,
drilled to a high standard and honed into professional warriors.
The
journey stirred many memories for Daniel, his bitterness softened by nostalgia,
his sadness lightened by the fact that he had been able to carry on from his
father and achieve, in the army that had ousted the Stuart dynasty without
firing a shot, what Nathan Rawson and his fellow-rebels had failed to do.
Dedicating himself to military life, Daniel had now risen to the rank that his
father had held at his death. One Captain Rawson had been succeeded by another.
Riding
south, he soon came to the village of Durston, a small community nestling
around an old parish church. It was here in his birthplace that his father had
been laid to rest on the night after he had been hanged. Having cut him down
from the gallows, Daniel and his friends had been able to do nothing more than
bury him in an unmarked grave, hard against wall of the churchyard and largely
obscured by a yew tree. Fleeing the country with his mother, the boy had prayed
that nobody would discover the hasty, unlicensed grave.
Years
later, when he was still in the Dutch army, he was able to return to the
village and explain to the vicar what had happened. His plea fell on
sympathetic ears and the bones of Nathan Rawson were disinterred and buried in
a more fitting spot with a headstone to mark it. His father was not an
interloper in the churchyard any more but a welcome son of Durston, occupying a
legitimate place at last. The year before she had passed away, Daniel had been
able to bring his mother back to England to visit her husband's grave. It had
brought immense comfort to Juliana.
Tethering
his horse, Daniel entered the little churchyard and picked his way through the
crosses and tombstones, some encrusted by moss and bird droppings, others
leaning over at acute angles. When he came to his father's grave, he first
removed the large pile of twigs and leaves that had blown up against it. The
headstone glowed in the sun, its chiselled inscription standing out clearly. Daniel
removed his hat and looked down at the last resting place of Nathan Rawson,
recalling happier times while not forgetting the horror of his father's
execution. The boy's belief in the concept of justice had been shattered by the
Bloody Assizes. George Jeffreys, the leading judicial butcher, had died a mere
three years after the ghastly event but his name could still make Daniel seethe
with fury.