Bloods revolution, p.31
Blood's Revolution, page 31
As Holcroft walked in the door somebody outside shouted, ‘Fuck the Papist King!’ and flung a burning branch into the room through the shattered window, and an earthenware pint pot followed it and crashed on the floor, breaking apart and spilling some dark liquid that looked and smelled like whale oil. The two missiles landed yards apart but the oil began to leak over the floor. A pistol cracked from the darkness outside and a ball punched into the wall by Holcroft’s head. He could make out a mass of people in the street, adults, children, some hundreds of folk grinning and capering in the light of torches and lanterns, blood-red faces in the firelight, open mouths; they were shouting, roaring, howling. He could see weapons being waved, pikes, swords, carving knives, and a pistol or two. Some tuneless drunk was bawling an old nursery rhyme, the words only half-heard over the tumult: ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’.
‘Get your head down, sir,’ shouted Miller. Holcroft fell to his knees and began to crawl towards the door. A green glass bottle was hurled through the window, shattered on the floor. A large lump of rock crashed after it.
‘Right,’ Sergeant Miller said, ‘first section: up now, cock your pieces.’ A handful of fusiliers, eight or nine men, rose from their places of cover beneath the window sill and aimed their flintlocks out into the darkness. There was an animal like roar from outside; pistol shots sounded, two very close together, the bullets flying high and ricocheting round the classroom. None of the fusiliers flinched. ‘Take aim,’ said Miller. ‘Try not to kill the kiddies, lads. We ain’t savages. Fire!’
The thin volley crashed out, a dozen spurts of flame stabbing into the dark street. There was a horrible girlish scream and a fit of loud cursing, a pistol fired back from outside, smashing into the ceiling and releasing a shower of snow-like plaster.
‘. . . he had ten thousand men.’ The drunk was still belting out his child’s ditty.
‘He marched them out to Salisbury Plain.’
‘And he marched them back again . . .’
‘First section: reload,’ shouted Miller. ‘Second section: up lads, on your feet.’
Holcroft was by the ruined door. He stooped, picked up the burning branch and hurled it spinning out of the window. ‘Want to take over, sir?’ whispered Miller.
‘You are doing fine,’ said Holcroft. ‘Carry on, sergeant.’
‘Second section: take aim. Pick your targets, lads, choose ’em well. Fire!’
The musket fire lashed the street outside. More shouts of pain and rage.
Holcroft poked his head out of the open door, a swift assessment. There were three or four bodies on the cobbles, a large pool of blood by the burning branch. And a sea of angry folk. They were, at least, keeping well back – the two volleys had done that much – the Savoyards were taking cover behind barrels, behind a large four-wheeled overturned hay cart, in the decrepit brick buildings on the other side of the street. By God, there were a lot of them. Three, four hundred. Men, women and children, watching, laughing, excited by the sport. Some leaning from windows in the houses, some clustered on the low roofs. And there were more coming on, hundreds, a tide of folk heading down the street from the Strand to join in the fun. His eye was caught by moving spot of red. The burning coal on the cord of a matchlock musket. A tall man in a rakish, broad-brimmed hat pinned up on one side, a rank-rider perhaps, was boldly standing at the side of the upturned cart, using it as a rest and pointing the matchlock at Holcroft, squinting down the barrel. He ducked inside as the musket fired and a burst of splinters exploded from the door frame.
‘First section: on your feet. Cock your pieces . . .’
We’re trapped, thought Holcroft. If we leave here we will be torn apart. And someone, soon, will succeed in setting this building on fire and then we will roast.
He pulled the Lorenzoni from his sash, cocked it, waited for the echoes of the fusiliers’ volley to die away, and spun round the doorframe. He pointed the pistol at the tall man in the broad-brimmed hat, a dozen yards away, who was now concentrating on reloading his matchlock, pouring powder down the long barrel.
Holcroft shot him through the skull, knocking the man down in a spray of brains and blood. He dodged back through the door before the man’s legs stopped jerking.
‘This is no good. We’re going to have to make a run for it, John.’
Miller looked up at Holcroft with sombre eyes. ‘I think I’d rather go down fighting in here, captain, if it’s all the same to you. There’s hundreds of the bastards out there, armed and angry. I’d say our end is pretty much certain either way.’
‘No, John, I think we can make it. If we run hard, some of us will get away . . .’
Miller raised an eyebrow. ‘Whatever you think is best, sir.’
‘Cease firing! You soldier-boys in there, stop your shooting!’
The voice was a bull bellow and coming from directly outside the school.
‘Hold your fire, sergeant,’ said Holcroft.
‘Flag o’ truce, you King’s lickspittles. I’m showing the flag o’ fucking truce!’
Holcroft darted his head around the doorframe. He could see a huge man, a flesh mountain with a vast shaven head, standing alone in the centre of the cobbled street holding what looked like a dirty linen bed sheet in one enormous hand.
‘Show your white flag, soldier-boy,’ the man bellowed at him, ‘and we’ll have us what they call a parlay. All nice and friendly. No need for anyone else to get hurt.’
Holcroft handed the Lorenzoni to Miller. He unwound the scarlet sash from his waist, took off sword belt and coat, stripped off his shirt. He flapped it out the door.
‘I see it, soldier-boy. My, that’s a nice clean one. Not sure I’ve ever seen a flag o’ truce so lovely and white. Now step outside and we’ll have a little chat.’
Holcroft put his coat back on his bare torso. The night air was freezing.
‘I should go, sir,’ said Miller. ‘There’s no trusting these folk.’
‘No, John. You and the lads watch from the windows. Keep the muskets trained on him. If he makes the slightest wrong move, you can shoot him down like a dog.’
Holcroft stepped out of the doorway. The big man stood with his arms by his sides, the bed sheet trailing in the mud by his huge booted feet. Behind him the Savoyards were emerging from their bolt holes, more curious about this captain of King’s men, that they had trapped here like a rat, than afeared of him.
Holcroft ignored the people who gathered on either side of the vast, bald man.
‘You wanted to talk to me,’ he said.
‘Your name is Blood, yes? Holcroft Blood.’
Holcroft nodded. A woman in the crowd, a pretty, rake-thin type with a beak of a nose, gave a huge, gasping sob, and covered her head with her shawl.
‘Don’t mind her,’ said the giant. ‘She’s just a little excited to be meeting you tonight. See, you killed her man Michael. He was my brother. Her husband, my brother, dead as a stone by your hand. I said she could have you when I’m done.’
Holcroft shrugged. ‘I had no quarrel with him but he would have murdered me, if he could. You will be Patrick Maguire then, the so-called king in these parts?’
‘Aye, that’s me. You did for my other brother, Francis, too, in Mincing Lane.’
‘So what? I defended my house, my wife and myself. I’d do the same again.’
‘See that body lying there with the top off his head. That was my last living brother. His name was Seanie. Saw you pistol him just now, with my own eyes.’
‘Is this all you wanted to talk about? Because, if that’s it . . .’
‘I want you to know why you must die tonight. It’s personal. Vengeance, see?’
‘Oh, I must die, must I?’
‘Aye, you must.’ The huge bald man was calm. He gave no hint of anger or any other emotion. He seemed mildly happy, content, even a little pleased.
‘When you’ve recovered from all your grief and sorrow, you know where to find me.’ Holcroft turned to go back into the school. He saw Miller standing at the doorway with a levelled flintlock. Half a dozen fusiliers were peering out of the shattered windows, pointing their pieces at Maguire and the mass of raggedy folk around him. Holcroft glanced once more at the crowd, which looked like a savage horde in the red firelight. Some of the Savoyards had blades, rusty swords, knives. One had a half-pike. A few had pistols of various sizes. A stout fellow had gathered up Seanie Maguire’s matchlock and bandoleer of charges and was leaning on the grounded weapon with his ankles crossed, almost as if in a parody of a soldier at rest.
Holcroft was nearly at the door when he heard Maguire’s bull rumble: ‘I know you are not a coward, know that sure as I know anything. That’s why I reckon you will fight me – man to man, toe to toe. It’ll be a fair fight because I am a fair man. No guns, no knives, just our bare fambles.’
Holcroft turned around slowly. ‘Why would I choose to fight you without weapons? You’ve ten stones on me, easily. Five inches in height. Longer reach, too.’
‘And you’re twenty years younger, son. But I’ll tell you why you’ll fight. For them poor sons o’ Mars over there.’ Maguire jerked his chin at the fusiliers at the shattered windows.
‘I’m listening,’ said Holcroft.
‘If you beat me, fair and square, if you can knock me senseless, or punish me so bad I can’t come up to scratch after a count of ten, or make me yield, or kill me even, I give you my word you can all walk away free as the birds. If I beat you, knock you cold, or kill you – your body is mine, or rather, it’s Sally’s over there’ – he nodded at the thin weeping woman – ‘but the rest of you can go free. Jacob Creech here will stand surety for me, if I’m unable to speak up for myself for whatever reason.’
Maguire reached behind him and seized the shoulder of a villainous-looking man with long greasy grey hair and a rust-blotched but still serviceable cutlass cradled in his arms. He pulled the man in front of him, showing him to Holcroft.
‘Creech, you heard my words, yes? You’ll make sure my wishes are followed.’
The man smiled and revealed a full set of surprisingly even white teeth.
Holcroft looked at Maguire, measuring him with his eye. He was enormous; tall as an apple tree and thick in chest and belly. His arms were a heavy as another man’s thighs and lumped with muscle. His great hands and fingers were like bunches of sausages. But he was a good deal older than Holcroft, and carrying a quantity of extra weight, and he looked like he would move a little more slowly than he might.
‘I know you are no coward,’ Maguire said. ‘But I’d like to make this crystal clear: if you won’t fight me, for whatever reason, don’t matter why, I will burn that fucking school to the ground with all of you inside it. And any man who lives through the inferno will wish that he had not when I pluck his body from the ashes.’
‘I’ll fight you, sure,’ said Holcroft, nodding slowly at the big man. ‘For my own vengeance and for my pride, and for the arrangement that you offer – the lives of my men – and for one more thing besides. A condition.’
‘This is not a fucking negotiation.’ Maguire seemed irritated for the first time. ‘I’m no wheedling merchant. That is the arrangement. Nothing else. What I offered to you. The lives of your men – and yours, if you can beat me. Take it or leave it.’
‘This is a negotiation, and I will tell you why. For one thing: I think you want to fight me. I think you want to pound me into red meat to avenge your stupid and incompetent brothers. I think you’d rather do that to me with your own hands than set fire the school. And I will give you the chance. There’s another thing to consider: we are not defenceless, you could die in the battle over the burning school . . .’
John Miller, with impeccable timing, chose that moment to pull back the dog-head on his fusil to full cock. The metallic click seemed louder in the silence. Maguire glanced at the sergeant by the doorway with the levelled musket pointing at his head, then looked back at Holcroft without showing the slightest trace of fear.
‘. . . and another thing to mention,’ said Holcroft, ‘is that you don’t know what it is that I want from you. My condition. It might be something you are willing to give me. I’ll tell you now: it is a question. You answer it honestly and I swear I’ll fight you, just as you want me to, man to man, toe to toe, empty-handed.’
‘What is your question?’
‘I want to know where the Frenchman is. Your employer. I don’t know what you called him – he calls himself Narrey – but his true name is Henri d’Erloncourt. He is a man who deserves death many times over. I thought to find him here. Where is he?’
‘If I tell you all that I know about his whereabouts, you will fight me?’
‘Yes, if you speak the truth.’
The big man smiled. ‘I can tell you this, soldier-boy, the honest truth, with God as my witness . . . I have no notion where that creeping French sodomite is now.’
Maguire threw back his head and roared with laughter. The crowd around him giggled and snickered too.
‘Tell me what you know,’ grated Holcroft. ‘He was here, was he not? Under your protection? Where is he now?’ He felt the first stirrings of true anger. He was looking forward to punching the arrogance out of this big Irish sack of lard.
Maguire mastered himself. ‘I sent him packing in the summer, end of June, I think – him and his hard man Guillaume. I’d had enough of their ways. I spread the word that nobody was to set foot in the school again. And since their baby enterprise had proved to be unnecessary, they went away quiet as mice. Ha, soldier-boy. You’re here on a fool’s errant. The Frenchman hasn’t been in these parts for six months! So, now, enough chatter – we fight.’
‘Wait! Narrey – the Frenchman – he came back a week or two ago. You did not see him? Or hear of him?’
‘Not a word. If he came to London he did not set foot in the Liberty. I doubt that he came to Rum-ville at all – I’d have heard something from somebody. I have many good friends all over this wicked old town. Now, son, time for talking is done.’
‘What do you mean their baby enterprise proved to be unnecessary?’
‘Exactly that. They had some fancy design with the doxies in St Mary’s in case they needed a baby, a baby boy, God knows why, and in the end there was no call for the child after all. Waste of time. Guillaume whispered this to his bum-boy, who told it to me. That’s all I know. But enough of this: toe the line, soldier!’
Holcroft nodded. He went over to Miller and began to take off his blue coat, the frigid night air almost painful on his bare chest and back.
‘What say you, sir?’ whispered Miller. ‘How about I just shoot the big bugger in his fat head and be done with it? Then we take our chances.’
Holcroft looked over at Maguire, who was stripping off his filthy rag of a shirt, surrounded by a gang of grinning, back-slapping Savoyards. ‘I’ll fight him. I gave the brute my word. And I told my brother Tom I’d deal with the bastard, too.’ He handed the sergeant his big blue Ordnance coat, and hopped up and down on his toes a few times, swinging his bare arms in wide circles.
However, he was not concentrating on the coming fight. He was not planning how he might defeat this monster. His head was reeling at the thought of how neatly he had been played by Narrey. The letter from Aphra had been a fake. That was clear now. Narrey had written it and arranged for it to be delivered it to him to send him on this doomed quest into the heart of Maguire’s territory. Narrey had tricked him into coming here. Manipulated him into putting his head into this trap.
He had been a damn fool. And now he was going to pay for his foolishness.
Chapter Thirty-seven
10 December 1688: Palace of Versailles
His Most Christian Majesty Louis XIV, by the grace of God, King of France and Navarre, watched the jet of the fountain soar thirty feet into the air like a foot-thick pillar of water. It was one of the simplest of the hundreds of elaborate fountains in the gardens of Versailles – a single, towering water-spout set in the centre of a perfect circle of blue water – but it was the one that he privately admired the most.
The Orangerie that surrounded the lone fountain and its circular pool was almost deserted that crisp December morning. Apart from the slim, beautifully dressed young man standing beside him, and a dozen servants following the royal promenade at a discreet distance, there was no one else that Louis could see, save for a lone gardener two hundred paces away, on his knees tending to the roots of one of the fragrant orange trees, which had recently been replanted in their large square wooden boxes for the winter as a protection against the cold weather.
‘Barillon says he is finished,’ said Louis. ‘He says that James Stuart will never again rule his Three Kingdoms. He says I should wash my hands of him – give James a pension and somewhere to live and make my peace with the Prince of Orange.’
‘With the greatest respect, Majesty, Barillon is an old man and he is a little jaded – he gives up too easily,’ said Henri d’Erloncourt. ‘Things have gone badly, yes. No question. The defection of the Army officers to William’s side was a severe blow. But James has not lost the game. He has suffered a major setback. And it may be that he must quit England for a little while. But he is by no means finished. Nothing is yet settled in England. You might say that he has had to reculer pour mieux sauter.’
‘Do you truly believe that, Monsieur le Comte? On your honour? You are not merely attempting to disguise your complete failure to achieve your mission?’
‘My mission, Majesty, with which you honoured me three years ago, was to ensure a Catholic succession for the throne of England by whatever means necessary – if you will forgive me, sire, those were your exact words. I carefully made my dispositions to ensure a successful outcome. Yet, in the end, the mechanism I designed was not required. I was ready but, in the event, it was not necessary to make the substitution. James has a son, born in the ordinary way of his wife Mary; and the boy will be raised in the True Faith. Under my watchful eye a Catholic succession for the King of England has been assured. I would not say, therefore, that I had failed.’
