Blood's Campaign Page 6

  Jackson stopped sponging the cannon’s filthy barrel, turned and looked to where Holcroft was pointing. On the square Norman keep in the centre of the castle, the red stag MacCarthy flag was being hauled down. Holcroft and Enoch watched, both holding their breaths. There was a murmur of anticipation, a low hum all across the No. 2 platform. A sense of building tension. Then, a flag began to rise up the tall pole on the castle keep. A white flag, pure as a virgin field of snow. The flag of surrender.

  Cheering broke out across the No. 2 Battery, and Holcroft could hear it rolling up in waves from the trenches below as the news of the surrender spread through the assault force. The Forlorn Hope’s sacrifice would be unnecessary.

  At last, thought Holcroft, at last they have all come to their senses.

  *

  Jacob Richards looked terrible. He had huge black shadows beneath his eyes and his body was swathed in bandages. His left leg was wrapped in clean linen from hip to calf. His right shoulder was swaddled and his right arm was in a sling. Half of his head was also bandaged where he had lost part of his ear.

  He lay in a wooden cot in the great hall of Belfast Castle, another Norman construction, which was the administrative capital of Ulster. The castle had been transformed into a magazine for General Schomberg’s munitions, as well as a general military storehouse, and the great hall had been turned into a makeshift officers’ hospital. There were half a dozen other patients in the long, oak-beamed room. All of them asleep except one cavalryman who had lost an arm and who was sitting up in bed, drinking wine and singing sadly to himself.

  Richards was also fast asleep and snoring softly. Holcroft sat on a stool by his side and watched him. It was past ten o’ clock. He wondered idly whether he should have brought his comrade some apples or a bunch of grapes or some other kind of fruit. Something. But it had not occurred to him in time. He also wondered if he should wake the man – he had been sitting there for more than an hour watching him sleep and it seemed to Holcroft a pointless activity. Perhaps he should wake his friend, ask how he was, pass on Jackson’s good wishes, ask if he required anything – and then he could ride back to the camp at Carrickfergus and be in his own bed by midnight.

  Richards was an efficient man, he would not want Holcroft to waste his time sitting there and watching him sleep. It is what the First Engineer would want – to be woken. Holcroft was almost sure of it. He was just finishing the internal debate when he saw that Jacob’s eyes were open and he was staring at him.

  ‘Richards,’ said Holcroft.

  ‘Blood,’ the injured man replied.

  They stared at each other in silence for a few minutes.

  ‘Do you like fruit?’ Holcroft said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s good. Because I didn’t bring any.’

  ‘Well, that is a stroke of luck,’ said Richards with the tiniest sliver of a smile. ‘What’s been happening? Have you made Schomberg his breach?’

  ‘The walls have been breached but, thank God, the town surrendered before the assault began. They’ll march out tomorrow. Safe passage to Newry.’

  Richards nodded. ‘What about your Frenchman – the spy?’

  Holcroft grinned. ‘Got him. I brought an eight-inch Humpty to a position down under the walls – took me all night – then Enoch and I blew him to Hell.’

  ‘Bravo! That was a rare coup.’

  ‘Uncle Frederick didn’t think so. Said I was disobeying orders. That I should have left Narrey alone and worked on the breach. He’s suspended me. Said he wouldn’t trust me with a blunderbuss. He might well send me home.’

  ‘Nonsense – Schomberg can’t afford to lose you. He has few enough trained Ordnance officers already, and with me hurt, out of action . . . and young Barden’s an idiot. Field is good but too inexperienced. He needs you. He’ll make you sweat for a while, then you’ll be back with the guns.’

  ‘I don’t know, Richards. He was in a rare bate.’

  ‘He likes you. And he won’t choose to be without you. You are now the most senior officer in the Train. Say you’re sorry, be contrite, all will be well.’

  Holcroft said nothing for a while. Both men stared into space. Richards shifted in his bed and gave a small groan. Holcroft said: ‘Are you in pain? Your wounds – do they trouble you? Did they give you something to ease them?’

  ‘It’s fine. Leg throbs a bit. That’s all. I’ll be mended in no time.’

  There followed a few more minutes of silence. Holcroft stared at his boots.

  ‘Enoch Jackson sends his compliments, by the way.’

  ‘That’s kind of him.’

  Holcroft got to his feet. ‘So, do you need anything?’

  ‘Not a thing. They are looking after me very well here. And there is one particular person who has been very kind to me . . . Ah, here she is herself . . .’

  Holcroft heard steps behind him and turned to see a slim, pale, raven-haired young woman approaching with a lit oil-lamp in one hand and an earthenware mug in the other. The change in Jacob Richards was astounding. Despite his pierced thigh and ripped shoulder he seemed to be trying to sit up in bed, as if to attention. His face became suffused with happiness, so much so that it almost appeared to be glowing.

  ‘Good evening, Major Richards, I’ve brought you a night-posset. Brandy, honey and some willow bark, with an egg beaten into it to give you strength.’

  ‘Good evening, Caroline. You are most kind. A brandy posset – just the thing. Excellent! Yes, indeed, nothing like a posset to set a chap to rights.’

  Holcroft stared at Richards. The normally taciturn soldier was chattering away like a schoolboy. He seemed positively skittish.

  ‘You drink it all up while it’s warm, Jacob. It will help you sleep.’

  ‘You really are too kind, too kind. And I am eternally grateful to you, my dear. Such tenderness, it will quite spoil me when I go back to the trenches.’

  Holcroft examined the woman. She was pretty, yes, in an elfin sort of way, delicate, high cheekbones, and large tar-black eyes with long lashes. She was slender and held herself well, with her shoulders right back and spine straight. She was, in fact, rather elegant. Holcroft found he could not stop staring at her.

  ‘Who is your friend, Jacob? A fellow Gentleman of the Ordnance, I see.’

  ‘Oh, this is just Blood.’ Richards’ reticence had returned.

  ‘Are you not going to introduce us properly?’ she said.

  ‘Mmpff. Lady Caroline Chichester may I present Captain Holcroft Blood, Second Engineer of the Royal Train of Artillery, Gentleman of the Ordnance.’

  Holcroft bowed. The lady curtseyed in response. He found this person, who was clearly an assistant to a Belfast physician or some other sort of medical personage, to be remarkably entrancing. She must have been about five and twenty years old, clear skin, obviously well bred, and well dressed in a plain, well-cut green dress of some silk-like material that exposed her milk-white shoulders. Then she looked into his eyes – and smiled – and it turned his stomach to icy water.

  Holcroft frantically searched his mind for something to say. He knew people made witty conversation in situations like this. It was a practice at which he was spectacularly bad. ‘Where do you come from, my lady?’ he managed.

  ‘Oh, we come from North Devon originally, old English farming stock, but my family have been in Ulster for a few generations now and we have advanced a wee bit. I believe that we must, in all honesty, consider ourselves to be Irish.’

  ‘My father was Irish,’ he said. ‘Yet I think of myself as an Englishman.’

  ‘Blood was just leaving,’ interrupted Richards. ‘He needs to get back to Carrick.’

  Holcroft frowned at his fellow Ordnance officer, perplexed. He had not said to Richards that he intended to leave. In fact, he did not wish to leave this ward at all. He wanted to spend more time with this interesting Caroline person.

  Richards was scowling at him. ‘Thank you for visiting, Blood. My compliments t
o the mess and to General Schomberg. And, ah, so, God speed!’

  ‘You are riding to Carrick tonight, sir?’ asked Caroline. ‘Might I ask a great boon of you. I know it is a little forward but, might I perhaps come with you? I mean, would you be able to escort me to Carrickfergus? I have a horse and I’m told I’m an accomplished rider. I would not slow you down, I swear it.’

  ‘I am afraid that will not be possible,’ said Richards. ‘Captain Blood has his military duties to attend to and cannot undertake to escort civilians . . .’

  ‘I don’t have any military duties. I’ve been suspended. I can do as I please. But why do you want to go to Carrickfergus, my lady?’

  ‘My family has property there and I have many friends inside the town. I have visited Carrick a few times since the siege began but, of course, I have not been able to go inside the walls. Now that the rebel garrison has surrendered to General Schomberg I wish to see my friends are well. To help them if I can.’

  She is kind as well as attractive, Holcroft thought to himself. And bold and unconventional, too, to undertake a twelve-mile midnight ride with a stranger.

  ‘I should be delighted to escort you, Lady Caroline,’ he said.

  ‘Please, you must call me plain Caroline. Everybody does so. I shall call you Holcroft. If we are to gallop out together in the dark of night like a pair of wild raparees then I think we should at least treat each other as friends.’

  ‘Very well, then, Caroline,’ said Holcroft. He could hear a small gritty, crunching sound – it seemed to be coming from Richards’ mouth.

  ‘Are you ready?’ said Caroline. ‘Shall we leave poor Jacob in peace?’

  Caroline put her white hand on Holcroft’s arm and turning to Richards she said: ‘Make sure you drink up all that posset, Jacob. It will do you the world of good. I shall no doubt see you again in a few days when I return. Sleep well.’

  The wounded Ordnance officer smiled at her. A strangely painful grimace.

  ‘Richards,’ said Holcroft.

  ‘Blood,’ said the other, through his teeth. It sounded much like a curse.

  *

  Lady Caroline Chichester was indeed an accomplished rider. And as the August night was warm and the moon nearly full it was a pleasant journey that took no longer than two hours. Caroline pulled on a heavy travelling cloak and helped by a groom in the castle stables, she was soon sitting sidesaddle on the back of a spirited grey mare. Holcroft was on the back of Nut, one of the three chargers he had brought with him from England, which were cared for day to day by the Ordnance stable boys and farriers. Nut was short for The Chestnut, which was the colour of the three-year-old gelding. Holcroft liked the animals, particularly Chestnut, but he was not terribly imaginative when it came to naming them. His other two mounts were called The Grey and The Bay. He also found that it made giving orders to the Ordnance stable boys simpler.

  ‘Make sure The Grey is ready tomorrow morning, John.’ And so on.

  Holcroft had his small-sword at his side, and he had his Lorenzoni repeating pistol tight against his belly, held by his red officer’s sash, and easily accessible to his right hand. The Lorenzoni was a wonderful machine that Holcroft had bought from an impoverished Italian mercenary and which could, if necessary, fire seven shots without needing to be reloaded. He was not expecting trouble – he had seen a few stray riders and a couple of two-wheeled dog carts on the way to Belfast but there were supposed to be Jacobite irregular cavalry, the wild raparees Caroline had mentioned, operating in the area.

  As they rode, Caroline told Holcroft a little of the history of the region. She explained that until recently Carrickfergus had been the most important local place, with its sea links to Scotland, England and the Isle of Man, and Belfast had been no more than an insignificant town with only a thousand inhabitants.

  Holcroft listened closely. It soon became clear that she came from a powerful aristocratic family – not that Holcroft cared about such matters of class – but what he did enjoy was that she projected no sense of superiority. She was open, friendly and treated him as an equal; she seemed interested in him and managed a feat that few others had: she persuaded him to speak about his relationship with his father, the notorious outlaw Colonel Thomas Blood, and to recount his attempt to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.

  He warmed to her immediately when she said: ‘I never trusted Lord Danby – met him as a girl and there was something odd, something off in his manner.’

  Holcroft had run up against that unpalatable nobleman when his father had been imprisoned in the Tower after the attempted theft, and Danby had sent an assassin, an old friend of his father’s, to murder him in his cell. Holcroft had encountered his lordship again when the man had been plotting to bring William of Orange over to seize the Three Kingdoms. Holcroft had never trusted Lord Danby either.

  She also spoke most kindly of his friend Jack Churchill – now Lord Marlborough – whom she had met on a visit to London some years before. ‘Such a handsome man,’ she said. ‘So kind and courteous to me, although I was just a silly provincial girl. He took me to the theatre in Drury Lane, gave me wine and quite turned my head. It was fortunate in that I was well chaperoned that evening or I might have done something foolish.’

  Holcroft instinctively disliked the very idea of her doing anything ‘foolish’ with Jack – but the thought of her doing something foolish with, for example, him, well, that held a definite appeal. He was no satyr, of course. He would not dream of forcing himself on her. And he was a married man . . . But she was a most delightful companion. And he’d not seen Elizabeth in months . . .

  Caroline broke in on his thoughts. ‘May I ask you a delicate question?’

  Intrigued, he said that she might. ‘Can you tell me what “windage” is? We were discussing his work, and Jacob mentioned it the other day and I did not like to ask what it meant. It sounds like . . . uh . . . an embarrassing intestinal affliction.’

  Holcroft was more than happy to explain it to her. Windage, he said, was the gap between a cannon ball and the barrel of the gun. Too much and the ball would rattle around in the barrel as it emerged and would not fly straight.

  ‘But it can also refer to the deflection of the ball in flight,’ continued Holcroft, ‘caused by, for example, a gust of wind blowing across the direction of its travel, which can make the ball deviate significantly from its true line. It is a fascinating subject. I don’t know if you are aware of Blondel’s work . . .’

  What followed was a detailed and, for Holcroft at least, delightful discourse on the more arcane points of modern gunnery, and Caroline showed herself to be an attentive listener, nodding and agreeing whenever appropriate.

  The miles flew by.

  Towards the end of the journey – when it was gone midnight – Holcroft said to her: ‘Where are you planning to stay in Carrickfergus? I could give you my tent, if you like, and I would, of course, happily bed down in the horse lines. You would be safe, I assure you. My cot is reasonably warm and comfortable.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Holcroft but I’m sure that will not be necessary. As I think I mentioned, my family own a property in Carrickfergus. A big house, in fact. I shall stay there – there are bound to be a few of the servants knocking around and I’m sure I shall be quite comfortable. It is only for a day or two, after all.’

  Holcroft felt suddenly cold. They were trotting along a wide track with the black waters of Belfast Lough only a few yards to their right and a stiff, salt-tasting breeze gusting in off the cold sea. But it was not the wind that made him shiver. Up ahead to the left he could see the lights of the English Army encampment spread out like a field of glowing embers and the lights of the town and the castle winking away too. The siege over, the men on both sides would be celebrating. He could hear faint snatches of song on the wind. He felt utterly despondent. She was such a fine and beautiful girl. She even seemed to like him, too. And in a moment she would regard him as a monster.

&n
bsp; ‘Is your brother by any chance Lord Donegall?’ he said, dreading the reply.

  ‘Why, yes, he is. I thought you knew.’

  ‘And is your property in Carrickfergus called Joymount House?’

  ‘Yes, that’s our place.’

  ‘I am sorry, Caroline, but I don’t think you’ll be sleeping there tonight.’

  Chapter Six

  Wednesday, August 28, 1689

  The Jacobite garrison of Carrickfergus, some three hundred and fifty surviving soldiers together with their women, children and servants, marched out the North Gate of the town they had defended so well, and turned left on to the main road with drums beating, fifes playing and standards flapping.

  Holcroft watched them with a jaundiced eye from his position on the edge of the artillery park on the rising ground to the north of the town, lounging on a horse blanket outside his own little campaign tent. He had drunk himself to sleep the night before with a bottle of brandy purchased from Quartermaster Edmund Vallance. The brandy had cost him a gold sovereign – an outrageous amount – but when he had complained, Vallance told him it was after midnight, his stores were shut and he might take a bottle at that price or come back in the morning.

  He had felt obliged to confess to Caroline that he had all but destroyed Joymount House with his mortar shelling, and the subsequent fire it had caused, and she had become immediately tight-lipped and silent, eyeing him with what seemed very much like a deep loathing. He regretted his decision to tell her now – but at the time he had felt that honesty was the best policy. If she later found out, she might accuse him of trying to cover up the truth. Of lying to her. And he could not bear for her to think him dishonest. She had grudgingly accepted the offer of his cot and he had gone off and purchased the exorbitant bottle from the quartermaster – that grinning thief – and drunk most of it before falling asleep in a pile of straw in the horse lines. He drank the rest of the brandy in the morning, when he discovered that Caroline had left his tent early, with no kind word, just a cold note saying that she had gone into Carrickfergus looking for friends and relatives who might have survived the barbaric outrages of the siege.