Traitor

Chapter 43

THE RAIN TEEMED down without respite. Reaphook could not go on. His thigh was turning black where the girl at the farm had stabbed him. He knew he had gangrene, for he could smell its sickly sweetness.

‘He’s done for, lad,’ Pinkney said to Andrew. ‘Musket-ball in the heart would be the kindest thing. That’s what you’d do for a mastiff when its days were up.’

‘Could we not cut the leg away?’

Pinkney shook his head briskly. ‘First, we’ve no surgeon. Second, the wound’s too high. The rot’s spread to his body. He told me his prick has turned black and it pains him to piss. Even if we could save him, no man wants to live like that. You keep him talking so he don’t see it coming. Easier that way.’

The provost marshal turned aside, huddled against the constant rain.

Andrew went and sat by Reaphook. Neither of them had soles to their boots and both had strips of rags wrapped about their feet. They were soaked through. Andrew could not recall the last time his skin had been dry. The stink of Reaphook’s rotting body was somehow made worse by the eternal damp, and it almost overpowered him.

Reaphook’s breathing was shallow and laboured, but he opened his eyes at the touch of Andrew’s hand on his arm. He was burning up. Andrew handed him a mess-tin of rainwater that he had caught in his cap and Reaphook drank greedily, then clutched at Andrew’s dripping cassock with his wasted, claw-like fingers.

‘I saw you do that thing with your hand over them Frenchies you killed.’

‘The sign of the cross?’

‘Aye. What does it do?’

‘It’s a prayer for their spirit, seeking forgiveness. The extirpation of sins. A blessing.’

‘I done a lot of bad things, Private Woode.’

‘I know you have, Mr Reaphook.’

‘Is it too late for me?’

‘God tells us it is never too late. I no longer know if I believe it.’

‘But it’s got to be worth a try, though.’

‘Would you like me to pray for you? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Aye.’

‘You should repent your sins.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Say you’re sorry for all you’ve done wrong, all those you have harmed and robbed and … murdered.’

He wanted to say raped, too, but could not bring himself to utter the word, for it brought back memories of Ursula Dancer.

‘Well, then, I’m sorry.’

‘And for what you did to Ursula.’

‘For everything. I was born bad. My slut of a mother was bad and I never knew no father.’ Reaphook smiled slyly at Andrew. ‘You liked her, didn’t you? Wouldn’t have minded yourself, eh? Ursula pigging Dancer.’

Andrew felt the heat rise to his face. ‘You should not have treated her like that. She is a good woman.’

‘Like you. High-born. Never fitted in with the likes of us. A haggard, she was – a wild she-hawk that would not be tamed. I used to be copesmates with Staffy, you know. There wasn’t always bad blood between us. Used to go sharking, wenching and drinking together when he wasn’t so soft. He was sweet on her, but wouldn’t touch her. That was the problem – wouldn’t let no other man touch her neither. Went against the natural order. Anyone would have thought she was the virgin bloody queen. But once when he was cup-shotten, he told me stuff. I know where she came from. Gentry, her mother was. Squires or lords or somesuch from Grantley Brook. Rich as lions with land and gold. I’d cut all their throats. I’d have cut yours, too, just for being better than us. I wanted Spindle to do it, wanted to watch it and see her face as you died.’

‘Is she still alive?’

‘Well, she was when bloody Pinkney came back for me. That bastard Spindle had run away in the night, so I was taken in his place. And here I am.’

‘Say, “Father forgive me, for I have sinned.” That should be enough.’

‘Father forgive me, for I have sinned. And you can have my sickle. I bequeath it to you.’

Andrew made the sign of the cross over him and tried not to look past him at the approaching Pinkney, sword in hand.

Reaphook didn’t look either. He closed his eyes tight shut in anticipation of impending death. Pinkney pulled back the sword with both arms, then swung it at Reaphook’s neck. First strike did it. The head fell away, three-quarters severed, and blood gushed like a fountain.

They buried the body in the muddy earth, along with his sickle; no one wanted it. Then they resumed marching.

Two hours later, just before dark, they reached the English garrison at the port of Paimpol. All they found was the rump of the army; Norreys was long gone westward to Morlaix and, perhaps, to Crozon. Pinkney took on fresh food, munitions and boots, commandeered wagons – and took to the road again. He had no intention of missing this fight.

Captain Paredes paced up and down the battlements, looking out across the grey waters of Brest Harbour and beyond to the open sea. He stopped and gazed through a bevelled shooting slit at the English and Dutch ships. They were all stood off, outside Le Goulet – the rock-strewn narrows that led into the harbour – and out of range of the fort’s guns, but every so often Frobisher drove one or more of his ships forward. A half-hearted puff of smoke came from a single cannon, followed by the sound of gunpowder exploding and the dull thud of the ball taking a chunk of rock and earth out of the cliff-face below. The Spanish gunners wanted to reply in kind, but Paredes insisted they conserve powder and ball.

‘Why does he do this, Mr Shakespeare?’ Paredes demanded. ‘You must be acquainted with Martin Frobisher – why does he waste gunpowder and cannonballs in this way? He cannot possibly elevate his guns sufficiently to harm us. Nor can he be resupplied easily.’

‘It is probably as much to keep his own men occupied as to worry you.’

‘It makes no sense. I had thought the English good seafarers and fighting men. But this …’

‘I cannot argue with you. It makes no sense.’

But if it is intended to get under your skin, Captain Paredes, it seems mighty effective.

‘How long is it now? How long has Frobisher been here? How long have Norreys and his army been here? How many days has this rain fallen?’

Time was dragging. Days on end of gales and rain, broken only by the stilllness of dense fogs that seemed to suffocate the rocky headlands. To be enclosed in this impenetrable fort for days and weeks without number was taking its toll. The citadel of El Léon was starting to feel like a cold damp tomb.

In the evenings Shakespeare and Eliska dined with Captain Paredes and his officers, and played cards in a genteel fashion, to the sound of mandolins, as though they were not surrounded by an enemy that wanted their blood. Only the sporadic sound of gunshot and cannon boom intruded on the elegance of the setting.

Shakespeare would have liked time alone with Eliska, but they were closely watched. As a result they always met each other in the company of Paredes or one of his senior officers.

Shakespeare had, however, discovered a great deal more about the fort’s structure. Paredes enjoyed his company and took him on his daily rounds. The high, solidly built ramparts and bastions were to be found only on the landward approaches. Its designer, Rojas, must have decided that no army could scale the cliffs to attack, so the seaward defences were less robust. They were lower, too, following the falling-away contours of the clifftop. This was just as Sir Roger Williams had described the fort in his report to the Privy Council. Four culverins faced northwards from these lower ramparts, covering the narrows. Frobisher was in no position to seriously challenge such might; his fleet would merely take a severe battering to which it could not respond. All the English and Dutch ships could do was ensure that no Spanish galleons approached to break the siege.

As far as Shakespeare was concerned, the culverins did not matter. What was crucial was the height of the ramparts on which they were mounted. The walls were visible from the sea to the west of the harbour. Such a view would be impossible to landward.

The siege was not going well. The armies of Norreys and Aumont were bogged down, their tents dripping and drenched in mud.

Each day, more soldiers reported sick with the bloody flux. Pioneers had been unable to dig into rock, and so they had built up the thin muddy topsoil into entrenchments above ground, and these were beginning to stink of ordure. The siege train had arrived and had been reinforced by some of Frobisher’s ship cannon, hauled ashore at a nearby fishing village and mounted on spars. Keeping powder dry was a major problem, but the fourteen siege guns at last opened up with a brutal onslaught. Ball after ball smashed into the counterscarp. The Spanish merely laughed from the ramparts. Their fort could withstand ten thousand such barrages.

The soldiers passed the time drinking foul ale and apple brandy, staking their non-existent wages on a throw of the dice and trying to keep rust from seizing up the mechanisms of their weapons. They also hurled insults across no-man’s-land in broken Spanish and coarse English.

‘I fucked your mother last night!’

‘I wouldn’t fuck yours – I don’t fuck dogs!’

There were diversions, some murderous.

The worst of the horrors came on the English side: a company of foot, led by enthusiastic but inexperienced gentlemen volunteers, overran the counterscarp and threw ladders up against the bastions. They were easily hurled back and took casualties. Then a careless gunner sent a spark into a barrel of gunpowder, killing or wounding more than fifty English artillerymen and other soldiers. Gloom descended on the English tents.

The next morning one of Norreys’s messengers carried a parley flag aloft and marched to the fort’s gates to offer safe passage to all within if they surrendered. Captain Paredes did not hesitate: no surrender, no talks, no quarter asked or given.

And then the weather grew yet worse.

A howling gale roared in and the siege settled into a hopeless stand-off. If Norreys and Frobisher did not launch an all-out attack soon, the siege would be lost to winter.