Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [137]
On the other hand, Allendale was an oddity. It might just prove that to have a man’s life in his hands was the spur that he needed to quieten his conscience. If he brought himself to fire, there was no one in the fort who could do it better. Come to that, there was no one else he would trust to do it at all.
Harry Palmer loaded, caught Austin Grey’s eye, and signalled. As one, the two long-barrelled hackbuts aimed, paused, and spoke. And on the breach, two of the enemy cried out, staggered, and dying tumbled back down to the ditch.
Swift and sure, Austin’s hands set to reloading. He was pleased and happy to find them so steady. He felt still through all his nerves the tingle of triumph he had experienced. Sick with apprehension, he had chosen his target and shot at it. And miraculously, the ball had struck the gold as it always did in the quiet of practice. He had not let his uncle down, or Sir Harry, or the brave and desperate men on the ramparts who were depending on him. He could shoot. He could save lives by shooting. And he had never known before the small, intoxicating glitter of personal victory.
Palmer was looking at him again. Austin smiled, and sighted his weapon, and fired at the same instant as Sir Harry. And two more French soldiers died.
They stayed at their posts firing until nightfall. Between them, they blunted the attack and were part of the reason why the French again called a retire, breasting the cold liquid mud of the ditches, their waterline leaved with the dying. Lord Grey, clapping his nephew on the back, gave him no time to speak or to think, but set him to supervise the repair work on the breach while the dead were thrust aside and the injured roughly tended and the scarce provisions told over.
He called them all briefly together a few hours before dawn, to hear a prayer and his commendation for the way they had fought. ‘I tell you,’ he said, ‘one or two more such banquets will cool the enemy’s courage. Hold to your posts. Fight like the men I know you to be.’
The stupidity happened after that in the crowded darkness, as they pushed and jostled about, each with his task to complete before the daylight robbed them of safety. Pain struck as Grey shouldered his way from the bulwark: a pain in his foot so intense that he thought at first it was severed and breathing hard, clutched the arms of the men on either side to prevent himself falling. Then Lewis got to him and he had himself taken indoors, quickly, before he made a fool of himself by losing consciousness. There, cutting off his blood-sodden boot, they confirmed what he suspected had happened: a soldier’s scabbardless sword had driven straight through the arch of his foot, severing tendons and releasing a gush of fresh blood which soaked all the cloths that they put on it.
He was not afraid of blood. But he was afraid of the rumours that start when a commander disappears from the field at the darkest moment and lowest ebb of the battle. He could not stand, but he had the foot cleaned and bound tightly enough to staunch the bleeding. Then he had them bring an armed chair and sitting in it, had himself hoisted like the Bishop of Rome and carried out once again to the bitter wind of the ramparts.
The last day dawned. As the hoar light sifted over the marshes, the Governor of Guînes saw how the enemy had spent the night.
The moat had been bridged. Hurdles, placed across floating casks, spanned the water, already packed with faggots and fleeces. And as he studied it, the day’s bombardment began.
It went on until three in the afternoon, and the violence surpassed all they had so far undergone. Borne from place to place, encouraging, ordering, Lord Grey decided by noon what to do. Before the battery ended, he ordered the men in the bulwark to retreat, leaving only a few to make a display of gunfire. Then he sent in his engineers to prepare to blow up the great tower whole.
He never knew whether his plan was discovered. It was perhaps nothing but ill luck that as the fuse was being laid, the assault increased with such fury that no