Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [135]
That was the spice in the unseasoned meat of one’s livelihood. Savoy had been shown it this winter, and he and Wentworth were the targets. Wentworth had succumbed and so might Guînes, if the troops from England failed to arrive to relieve him. He had sent Mary to beg help from Savoy, but he knew, even if they had help to give, that they would withhold it until the English bands came. If there was to be failure let it be an English failure, as Calais was an English failure. If there looked like being a success, then the troops mustering at Saint-Omer would be marched in to deal the finishing blow.
That night, Lord Grey made a speech to his troops from the bulwark, thanking God for the day’s success, praising his men and exhorting them to noble endeavours. In their hands, he said, lay the safety of Guînes; and he took oath before them, and asked his men to take oath in their turn, that the defenders of Guînes would die rather than betray any weakness, or surrender.
After that, they had to erect a new vawmure by entrenching six feet deep in the bulwark, and dawn of Tuesday showed that his forebodings were realized: the enemy had planted a big six-gun battery over the ditch in the market-place and another of three cannon on the ramparts, making a total of sixteen guns aimed at the cathouse and the flanking defence of the barbican. By the end of the morning the cathouse was intact, but not the flankers or the garden bulwark or the curtain wall; and by firing eight or nine regular salvoes an hour, the French were continually crumbling the breach.
The noise was punishing. One’s inclination, when it ceased for a moment, was to close the eyes and fall stunned into sleep, and this was dangerous, for the batteries only stopped when another sally was being made. That afternoon it was a regiment of Swiss who approached, with some French, and sent sundry small bands to examine the breach and to try and locate the numbers and stations of the gunners. But Grey was ready, and had the positions concealed. They harassed the reconnoitring party with hackbuts and watched them retire at length with qualified satisfaction: as soon as they were back in camp, the French cannon opened up once again.
The hours of darkness, once more, were spent in churning up mud in more trenching. Austin, at one point, came to try and persuade him to snatch some sleep and he did, for an hour: there was no point in leaving his men leaderless. He had no illusions about his command. The Spaniards were good, but they couldn’t get the last ounce from the English that he could. Bourne, helpless with gout, had lost his life defending the Mary on a stretcher.
Harry Palmer was able, but still feeling the shoulder wound he took at Bushing last month. He also made the mistake of mixing with the men far too much. They would go with him, but they wouldn’t rise, as they might have to, beyond themselves. That was why one talked to them of honour and glory. Men would fight well for their pay, but they would die for an aspiration.
Austin knew that. The trouble with Austin was that he believed so deeply in the chivalrous virtues that he found it impossible to refer to them.
In war—William Grey tried not to sound cynical—in war, it was alas the opposite nature one looked for.
The next day, Wednesday, the enemy opened fire with twenty-four cannon at daybreak, and the bombardment continued without ceasing for five hours or more, wrecking the curtain wall and driving right through the rampart and the new earthen countermure he had raised on it. He was on his feet all morning, moving between the Mary and Web’s Tower watching the effects of the cannonfire, and had just had a bench put down so that he could rest on it while he gave some directions to Palmer, with Lewis sitting side-saddle beside him, when the first telling salvo burst on them.
It was not the first time he had been on the lee side of a direct hit on patched ramparts.