Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [321]
‘Wait a bit,’ said Lancelot Plummer, poring over Danny’s maps. Then he sat up and looked at Lymond. ‘Is that what you mean?’
‘That’s what I mean,’ Lymond said. ‘What is it to be an engineer. Tell the others.’
Lancelot looked round. ‘It’s there on the map,’ he said. ‘Water-mills, two miles upriver from the bridge. One mill, or maybe two, driving down full pelt on the current would make a hell of a hole in a bridge.’
‘Especially,’ said Lymond, ‘if they were burning. In fact, I fancy they would crash right through and perhaps take the next bridge with them. After that, with any luck, they would burn away. I should prefer not to wreck all the bridges joining the coast road to Calais. Lancelot, what do we need? They’re held by chain and rope cable.’
‘A lawyer,’ said Lancelot Plummer indignantly. ‘What did I have to come back for? The Tsar only threw an axe at my ground-plans.’
But he not only gave them good engineer’s advice, he came with them; which only went to prove, thought Jerott with a touch of cynicism, how much he wanted to impress the court if and when he came back to it.
Once they lost sight of the lit city which was the Spanish encampment it was very dark, and they smelt and heard the river before they saw it. Normally, the ground sloping down to the water would have been thick with the hoofmarks of cattle, but it was many weeks since everything edible had been driven off from this stretch of land, and the small farms and cabins that lined the valley were all of them deserted and most of them uninhabitable.
They had expected the little village which lay round the watermills to be abandoned by its householders as well. It was with the stoicism of veteran campaigners that they saw, scaling the rising ground behind, that this was no longer the case. One of the Count of Egmont’s foraging parties had acquired half a dozen wagons of grain and were occupying the village in a litter of burning campfires, tethered horse, sacks, chaff, discarded armour and stacked pikes and hackbuts. The floating watermills of the Authie had been in use that day, and were presumably going to be asked to grind the rest of the grain at first light tomorrow morning.
Lymond said, ‘They’ll have sentries. Danny, go and see how many, and where they are.’
‘There’s a boat at the water’s edge,’ Guthrie said. ‘But we can’t use it now. And if we swim, they’ll still hear the blows of the axes, even if they don’t see us.’
‘There are two sentries,’ said Danny, returning. ‘And I can make out some of the voices in the village. They’re Spanish.’
‘That’s useful,’ said Lymond. ‘Now we want the password. Danny, do you think you could deploy your ineffable powers of invention and get the two sentries to challenge one another? And while you are arranging that, show Fergie how to avoid them so that he can get close to the buildings and check how many soldiers there are, with what sort of arms. Lancelot, we want to design an attack from that field there, using the lint and the gunpowder. Show Alec and Jerott what you want done, and then get down into the water and have a look at the mills. I want to know how long it would take to hack two of them free, assuming we can distract the men’s attention. Take Archie with you. All of you report back to me here as soon as possible. Who speaks Spanish? You do, Jerott?’
‘I can manage,’ said Alec Guthrie.
‘I used to be rather fluent,’ Plummer said. Sweat, like night rain on a window, glittered on his blackened face.
‘No, we need you. But if you’ll take Jerott’s kerchief and mine swimming with you, we ought to be able to clean our faces when you come back. It’s in your hands, gentlemen.’
It’s in your hands, gentlemen. It was the way he had ended his orders in Russia, although he had not then addressed them by first names. Guthrie grunted; and Danny slipped away, grinning.
‘Our belly lyke as it were glude/Unto the earth cleaves