Absolute Honour (41 page)

‘Shite,’ the Irishman said.

There was a moment’s pause, just a small one, as the two men regarded each other. Then they both moved simultaneously, Jack
stepping back and jerking the pistol out, Red Hugh throwing himself, still in his crouch, between the camp beds behind him.

Jack cocked and levelled the gun. As soon as he’d seen him again he’d realized the only way this man would stop was when he
was dead. And Jack had his orders. Aiming at the barest curl of red hair visible above the straw-filled bed, he fired.

The blast broke the silence that had held them all. Men started like untrained horses, shying from the shot, making for the
door. At the same time, there was shouting from outside, the sound of running. The entranceway was narrow, admitting only
two troopers at a time, so four men met in the doorway, smashing into each other, the force from without stronger, as well
as armed. The leading Irishmen tumbled back in, the rest scattering to the far sides of the long room.

‘Hold the door,’ Jack screamed at Puxley and Worsley, the first two in, though the instant clamour drowned all hope of hearing.
He himself ducked through the throng, against the tide, towards the entrance, drawing his sword as he ran. Traherne had said
there was only one way out. Red Hugh must come to him.

Three more cavalrymen had rushed in but these bunched in the doorway, heads ducked as if anticipating blow or shot. They blocked
the entrance of those beyond for a moment.
And above their shouts and the yells of the trapped men, a voice came. Loud. Commanding. Familiar.

‘Sons of Ireland,’ Red Hugh shouted, ‘we are all hanged men. But rather than dancing on a noose, let us dance our way across
the water to our friends from Spain. For Eire!’

Jack could not tell where the voice came from. But he saw the joint stool that accompanied the defiant shout flying from a
crowd of bodies, striking one of the troopers at the door. He fell with a yelp and, on the instant, stools, buckets, a bed
frame, all were being hurled. Puxley ducked, crouched, fired; an Irishman cried out. Worsley, who had dived to avoid the avalanche,
rose, shot. Two more troopers came through, one immediately down, one firing. The barracks filled with smoke and shrieking.

Jack had not got very far before the Irishmen’s volley of wood halted him, and he had thrown himself behind a trunk. Now he
raised his head, just in time to see Puxley felled, scarlet-clad men hesitating at the entranceway and the emboldened mutineers
rushing towards it en masse.

‘Eire!’ screamed the charging men, two in the lead using a bed frame like a battering ram, their force driving the troopers
back. Men poured out to meet men trying to burst in, the waves smashing together, the sounds of furious combat instant, carbine
shots, wood on bone, screams choked off in blood. Still Jack searched in the crowd, which was not short of red-haired men,
for one particular one. He did not see him.

And then he did. Not there in the struggle near the door but back, towards the rear of the barracks. McClune was hoisting
himself up onto a roof joist from the shoulders of another man. Then he began driving a bayonet between the beams to make
a hole in the roof.

Jack advanced, the last of the Irishmen passing ahead of him as they surged to the door. A quick glance told him that most
had got through it, were struggling, killing and dying
outside. Before him, splinters of wood were falling onto the man who’d lifted McClune. He had a sabre in his hands and stepped
forward now to Jack.

There could be no hesitation. Not when the man he’d chased twice across a continent was trying to escape. Jack came at a run,
ducked under the swung blade, thrust at the gut. The man stepped back fast, his weapon arcing down, smashing into Jack’s and
nearly dislodging it. Forced to the left, Jack stayed low, sliced his own weapon back across the man’s front, causing another
step back, this time into a camp bed. He wobbled – just slightly, just enough – and Jack drove his sword straight into the
man’s stomach. He collapsed, fell away with a scream. Something hit Jack, stinging where it struck his head. A plank fell
past his eyes and he looked up. Red Hugh McClune had started wriggling through the hole he’d gouged in the roof.

Jack leapt and grabbed his dangling legs. Red Hugh slipped, frantically jerking, then the boot Jack held came off. He fell,
landed with a thump that hurt, and watched as the two feet found their purchase again on the beam. Strangely, Jack noticed
that the stockinged one had a huge hole, recalling in a flash the Irishman’s always scrupulous attire. He’d sheathed his sword
to jump, leapt again, but the man was gone.

‘No,’ screamed Jack. He looked about him and saw Worsley, his face blood-smeared, moving towards him.

‘Hands!’ he yelled.

In a moment, Jack had a foot in Worsley’s palms, two hands on his shoulders, then on his head. The Devonian was strong, raised
him swiftly high enough to grab the beam. In a moment he was atop it, in another he’d thrust his head through.

It took several seconds to spot him through the now fast-falling rain. McClune was leaning against the slope of the roof,
one hand steadying himself against the earthen wall. He
was making his way towards stairs at the barracks’ end which rose to the ramparts above.

Jack pulled himself through, his feet immediately slipping on the slick wooden slats. Then he noticed the Irishman’s second
boot near the hole and he jerked his off. It gave him grip and he crabbed his way up to the wall. Once there, he again copied
the man he pursued, leaned against the earthen surface with one hand, his feet gaining traction on the wood. He didn’t glance
down. A slip, he knew, would have him rolling down the slope to crash onto the combat below, one that continued fiercely,
he could hear. Water had soaked powder, so no more shots were fired. The troopers of the 16th were fighting Traherne’s mutineers
with musket stock, foot and fist.

He had gained. McClune was now just ten feet ahead, swinging himself onto the stairs, running fast up them. Jack risked looking
straight up, though his feet slipped when he did. A head poked out from the roofed bastion above.

‘Stop him!’ Jack shouted up.

The sentry heard an officer yell but saw one of his own running at him. ‘What’s the fuss, Lieutenant?’ Jack heard him say,
just as McClune made the ramparts.

‘None at all, lad,’ came the easy reply.

Jack was scrambling again so he did not see the blow but he heard it and the accompanying clatter as the sentry fell. He gained
the stairs, ran up, reached the elevation only in time to see knuckles white on the rampart planks and fingers releasing.
He stepped to the edge.

The drop was not huge, fifteen feet perhaps, but the earthworks that had been thrown up against the log frontage of the fort
were a slope and McClune had tumbled on landing, rolled down. He lay at its base for a moment as if dazed, then, rising, began
to stumble towards the river.

There was no time to consider. Jack took the same route: up, over, a moment’s dangling, a release. He landed hard,
unable to stop the roll that followed down the slope. Then he staggered in pursuit.

Someone shouted from behind him. A musket cracked, a second, fire directed from the bastion where the powder would be dry.
There was no time to turn and tell them to aim at the traitor, not his pursuer. Hunching his shoulders against both rain and
ball, he ran on. He passed a red coat in the mud, stripped his own off, aware that McClune was leading him in a strange dance
of divestment. But the Irishman was moving away from the ford where a British picket was posted. And if he was going to swim,
Jack must be ready to follow.

He crested a last slope and looked down to the figure standing on the edge of the water, peering at it like a heron about
to strike. The man must have heard hard breathing, because he turned before Jack could start down the hill.

‘Absolute!’ he said. ‘The sight of you back there was enough to stop my poor auld heart. You’re never going to force me to
tax it further with a cold plunge?’

Jack took a step towards him. ‘There’s warmth back at the fort, Hugh.’

A slight smile. ‘I think the warmth you have in mind would be too dearly bought. And not at all guaranteed.’ He sighed. ‘No,
I think the water calls – for both of us perhaps. Are you a strong swimmer, lad?’

‘Strong enough.’ Jack was now just ten paces away. ‘Do you wish to wager?’

Something changed in the face, a hardness came. ‘I should have killed you when I had the chance,’ he said. Then he turned,
plunged in.

Jack ran and dived. When he broke the surface he saw the other head straight before him and he struck out after it. And as
he swam he remembered the first time he’d seen Red Hugh McClune, in the even more frigid waters off Rhode Island, a lifetime
before.

Something fizzed into the water in front of him, the crack of gunfire coming almost simultaneously. Cursing, he glanced back,
but no red coats appeared on that shore. He looked forward and saw a flash, just before a second ball plunged closer and he
understood why the Irishman had avoided the ford and made instead to this spot where he had friends concealed. Spanish friends.

Jack took a deep breath, drove himself beneath the surface and angled back towards the bank he’d come from. Another bullet
came, passing close enough so that, despite the murk, he could see it. Kicking harder, he found footing on the sloping shelf
of the river, cautiously thrust his head up. He was among the reeds and, as he looked back, he could just make out some movement
on the far bank. He heard a jingle of harness, the snort of a horse. When his shivering became near uncontrollable, he began
to clamber up through the reeds.

The pain was unbearable. It radiated down from the hollows beneath his eyes to spread throughout his entire face. Since they’d
taken up their position, silence had been ordered and a sneeze had become a suppressed snort. The quantity of mucus provoked
was astonishing, yet no matter how many times Jack dismounted to void it, more swiftly reappeared to drown him. And though
Portugal had returned to what Major Gonzalo assured him was its customary October warmth, the clearing of the rain clouds
had happened too late to save him. He still felt continually damp, still shivered as he had since his dip in the Tagus two
nights before. Burgoyne had even suggested that he should be replaced when the rest of the third troop rode out with the forces
sent to surprise the enemy on the hills of Villa Velha. He had done enough, his Colonel reasoned, foiling the mutiny. But
when a Spanish deserter had told them that
‘el Irlandes’
was still in their encampment, Jack knew that he could not remain behind.

He watched Captain Crawford riding back just below the ridge line, felt the men stir around him. Their leader was returning
from his conference with Colonel Lee, the operation’s commander, and would have their orders.

‘Absolute, Stokey, to me, please. And bring your sergeants,’ the man called softly, descending his horse with the aid of his
bat-soldier. His arm was out of its sling but still not quite healed.

They gathered so they could peer over the crest at two hills not more than three hundred yards across a small valley. The
Spanish tents were clearly visible in the moonlight. ‘We’re the reserve,’ Crawford said, to at least one audible sigh of relief.
Glaring, he continued, ‘The thousand men of the Portuguese Royal Volunteers are to go in first with the bayonet because it
is their land that’s been invaded and they’ll stick the poor bloody Dagoes in their tents. They’ll be backed by the two battalions
of Grenadiers in a second wave and we’re to follow them in at a walk, to be used as need arises. Questions?’

Cornet Stokey raised a hand. ‘Will they not see us the moment we move over this crest, sir?’

‘Colonel Lee doesn’t think so. Thinks they are as dozy as the shambles we thrashed at Valencia.’ He pointed. ‘Remember, if
they expect an attack it will be from their front, across the ford. They won’t have reckoned on us marching for two days to
take ’em in the rear.’ He looked around. ‘Anything else? Absolute?’

He supposed that his raised head and narrowed eyes indicated a question, rather than the sneeze that exploded. ‘No, sir. Excuse
me.’

Crawford shook his head in annoyance. ‘Very well, then. Muster the men. Colonel Lee will order a flag waved when he is ready.
That is all.’

Jack walked with Puxley back to the troop. ‘Nosebags off,’ he ordered quietly. He could see the same motions taking place
all down the line. He took a couple of paces up the slope, till he could just see over the crest. ‘You’re still there, aren’t
you, McClune?’ he muttered to himself, staring hard, as if sight could pierce canvas and reveal his quarry. Yet it
was prayer as much as comment, for he knew the Irishman could already have slipped away, or might yet in the chaos of combat
to come. ‘Bloody reserve,’ he said, sniffing hard. He’d wanted the 16th to charge in first. Not because he wished to stick
any poor bloody Dago in his tent. Because he wanted to end this for ever. If he lost him here, who knew when or even if he’d
ever come across him again?

A cough came from beside him. ‘Lucky’s ready, sir,’ said Worsley. ‘And the order’s just been passed to stand to the horses.’

‘Good.’ Jack began to move down the slope, then grabbed the younger man’s arm, halting them both. ‘Listen. McClune’s over
there.’

‘The traitor? Are you sure, sir?’

Jack nodded, though he wasn’t. ‘If we get a chance to ride for the camp, I might get … separated. For a time. Would you …’
He stopped, seeking the man’s eyes in the moonlight.

‘Get separated, too? Reckon I might. Us West Country boys should be as tight as a Plymouth landlord’s purse-strings, right?’

‘Right.’ Jack smiled, clapped Worsley’s back and went to stand beside his horse. Reaching up to his saddle roll, he checked
that the long package he’d wrapped in oilskin was still securely cinched to his saddle.